STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE

[VomKriege]

(Image removed from quote.)
Is there like a video history of all this?

I tried to but really there's too much there to just summarize. There's a ton of quotes there (From Robert Bros, Tony Zurovec, a couple big honchos at the studio + several former employees) and Roberts got a lot of space to hang himself with his own rope with regards to his management (Or the positive interpretation : That he is a demanding persona with a vision.).

There's no groundbreaking revelation (apart from the friction and internal politics between studios), but it's nice to have confirmation, often directly from CIG, about quite a number of things. Notably that up until a year ago, CIG had some serious growing pains and the project management was mediocre if not outright poor, which they claim to have fixed now. I'll let everyone form opinion on whether you can trust them or not with this... I guess the next CitizenCon could be telling.

Most flashy anecdote is probably how C.Roberts basically demand that stuff he saw in other games the day before be included : He asked for character models on par with The Order 1886 (which, as claimed above by an artist, happened 5 months from the supposed deadline...) or to replicate a layered inventory system from another title despite the objections of his employees about the feasability, causing the term in charge of inventory to spend 4 months trying to fit it in just to prove it didn't work. The article is being very sweet to CIG by pointing that despite the challenge, those features were partly implemented in game, glossing over the elephant in the room : delays...

Supposedly there's 4 articles coming yet, and I am very curious to see what they will touch on. From a skeptical point of view, the major topics are funding/marketing & the extensive performance capture shooting.

[VomKriege]

I'm pretty late to this whole game. I will say one thing. Regardless of whether this will be a success or failure. All you Star Citizen backers have sent one huge clear message to the gaming industry: "We're sick of the your shit games, shit politics, and you're share holder dick sucking cough no mans sky cough. We're funding our own game fuckers".

If nothing else... I hope the industry wakes the fuck up.
Well played SC backers. Well played.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/544gzz/starcitizens_troubled_development/d7znvh4

[VomKriege]

Latest rumor mill from SA, by TheAgent...

- the leaker back in august told me there was new mocap going to be put in after citcon in october
- but! sandi has been getting paid to do the fill in mocap for the female models for the last few months and! sandi will also be in the new scenes in october/november
- these are not technically "reshoots" since its new material, but had to be added since some actors are no longer available or desire to work with roberts and the script was rewritten (again, for the 3rd time after principle shooting)
- the last leak on mocap shooting was $29m, is now a projected $40m+ (one person said 60m but I dont believe that)

(...)

unconfirmed :

- ortwin [Freyermuth, business partner of Chris Roberts & attorney] is now distancing himself from the project, requesting a buyout

confirmed :

- legal ramifications for unpaid overtime due to an "anonymous letter" sent to the california labor commissioner

Take that with a grain of salt, most of that could be inferred without too much difficulty (we have a man claiming to be a CIG employee who said he made a 36 hours shift after all...).
I could believe that mocap budget, with the ludicrous amount of photography, but I wouldn't trust any number not coming from accounting, and we can't really judget that.

EDIT :

An interview with Croberts
http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2613-chris-roberts-on-star-citizen-procedural-planets-alpha3-citizencon

Having run this website for eight years now, and having worked with Chris Roberts on interviews for four of those, I often experience déjà vu during our ongoing discussions.

For the CitizenCon demo, though, a special planet has been created for a “Homestead demo.” This planet is more Earth-like in its biome distribution, containing forests, oceans, mountains, and deserts; the Homestead demo won't see inclusion in 3.0 and is purpose-built for the CitizenCon unveil of Planets V2. Roberts elaborated:

We're […] taking one of the missions that's in Squadron 42 and showing how that would feel, from the briefing, to the ship, to taking off, to the mission, and the combination of flying and FPS stuff, so those are the two things we're going to show. We're going to show full-focus this is what V2 planets can do for you, then this is what Squadron 42 is going to feel like and play like, and this is the experience of a mission in SQ42.

Another stretch goal being quietly brought behind the barn...

From the official site :

6m goal : Star Citizen will launch with 100 star systems.

From the article above :

One of the long-term schedule challenges is building out the universe that we've – in all the stretch goals, we got up to 100 star systems, I think we have 110 now – we're not going to have them all done on the day of release. We're going to try to get a good chunk of them through

[Stoney Mason]

That kotaku piece on the game is actually a terrific piece of video game journalism. The best I've read in quite awhile.

[VomKriege]

The Swedish magazine LEVEL made a few months ago a massive piece on Star Citizen, exploring the Roberts-Smart ego feud. Some translations were making the rounds undercover but Kotaku UK (which I learned is a Future Publishing company licensing the Kotaku name, not a Gawker property) is now publishing it officially in English, part of its series on Star Citizen. Haven't read it yet.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/26/the-24-year-feud-that-has-dogged-star-citizen

This one is guaranteed to generate some bile from Citizens, since it features a ton of Derek Smart (even if not very favourably...)

Having moaned for a few months on the lack of attention by the press of Star Citizen (Skeptical or not, one cannot deny it's an exceptional project worthy of attention), I can only applaude Kotaku UK for the months long effort. Much praise for having done the job properly and not repeating some of the mistakes of the Escapist a year ago.

What makes all of this even more curious is the fact that Smart is reportedly a completely different person outside of the spotlight: friends and colleagues describe him as kind and caring. This dichotomy is not lost on Derek Smart himself. In an interview with Polygon, he worried about what his daughter will think about him when she becomes old enough to Google his name. “I don’t want her memories of her dad tainting her ability to progress in life,” he said. “I know I haven’t done anything bad, and have made mistakes, I’m only human […] I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t steal from anybody, I just made a game that I wanted to make and I may have not succeeded in reaching other people’s expectations, but I don’t really care. It wasn’t about them. It was about me and what I wanted.”

That pretty sad.

EDIT

Oh god that Cutlass debate

The Cutlass is a prime example of the consternation that CIG’s ship-selling policy was causing among fans. It was originally pitched as a hybrid between nimble dogfighter and intergalactic freighter. When it was finally delivered, buyers were deeply disappointed: the ship was far too bulky and slow to hold its own against enemy craft. To remedy the situation, CIG elected to design two new Cutlass models, to co-exist alongside the original. Upgrading to one of them—to what the players thought they were getting when they shelled out $100 for the first Cutlass model—would cost an additional $20 or $50, respectively.

(...)

The Cutlass debacle also brought to light a thorny issue with CIG: its stewardship of the Star Citizen community, the very people who are providing Chris Roberts with a release valve for his vision. The debate about the Cutlass has been raging for as long as the game itself has existed, and it hasn’t always been civil—which is to be expected when someone forks out $100 and doesn’t get what he or she expected in return.

This is how community manager Ben Lesnick explains the toxic Cutlass debate on RSI in a YouTube clip: “We love the thread, there’s lots of great feedback. But let’s be absolutely clear. There is also lots of dinks out there, who are there to fight and talk about how ‘they betrayed us and you all need to get refunds for your Cutlass and they lied to us and this is all part of a conspiracy’…you guys suck! And I’ll say it right here on the livestream: don’t be that guy. If you’re going to be that guy we’re gonna ban you from the forums.”



(...)

When I read this quote to Chris Roberts, he is at a loss for words.

“I don’t think, I don’t think, he couldn’t have possibly, that’s not Ben.”

You can look it up on YouTube.

“Well, he must have been doing it as a joke or sarcastically. Do you know where he was? I am pretty confident that’s not him because I know him quite well. It is not the way he is.”

Are you saying he didn’t say these things?

“I don’t know, I have to see it. I know him well, and that is not his personality at all. In the case of the Cutlass, there is an ongoing joke in the community that ‘the Cutlass is the ship that hasn’t had the love or the Cutlass owners always get screwed’. Some group is always the downtrodden group, so the Cutlass owners themselves sort of take it on and they make jokes about it like on our online forum and stuff like that. So, I haven’t seen the material but my guess would be that he’s making fun of that reputation.

I will tell you that there is no one in our organisation that looks down on anyone that is part of our community. And we even put up with the people that are deliberate, like, we are actually quite nice even with people that we know are specifically trying to be trolls, trying to cause trouble.”

[bluemax]

(Image removed from quote.)
Is there like a video history of all this?

The basic premise is that they grew too big too fast, they outsourced stuff to be cheap early on, built up a ton of technical debt, tried to bring it in house to fix up but by that point in house meant 3 studios in 3 time zones and 2 continents. Feature creep started to set in because every time Chris announced a new feature they got a ton more money. Chris doesn't want to stop production on anything to just finish one thing because he feels they are building a massive future proofed MMO, but they are doing it with an engine designed for single player FPS games that has been gutted to the point where even the original FPS module doesn't exist anymore.

In short, give a $124mm to a guy who hasn't run a software company in over a decade brehs.

[benjipwns]

It was mostly innuendo and hearsay. No real newspaper editor would ever publish that article. No real journalist would ever submit an article that was "unnamed source said this, then another unnamed source said this."
These articles are the poster children of emberassingly shitty 'journalism'.
Of course, unnamed sources at Kotaku and PC Gamer have repeatedly told me both authors are crack-addled pathological liars with a penchant for goat-fucking. (...) Real journalism quotes exactly ZERO anonymous sources.

So this guy has never read a newspaper article? That's pretty impressive.

One of the recent "debates" within "regular journalism" was that they might be too easily granting anonymous status to people for things that don't really need it in order to meet deadlines. You'll regularly see stuff like "Hillary Clinton will be giving a speech in Baltimore today about her economic plan according to a source who requested to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to give that information." Because it was some campaign flunky who read it on the schedule and told the reporter but the reporter can't be assed to contact the campaign to officially confirm an official public event before putting their story out.

EDIT: typed it into google news, first three stories:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/debate-caucus-trump-clinton-228757

roughly 80 percent of insiders — with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans responding to the post-debate survey — said Clinton did the better job at the debate, including 99 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans. Only 21 percent — 1 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans — picked Trump as the winner.

“No contest,” said an Iowa Democrat — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “Trump held it together for 16 minutes and fell apart.”

http://observer.com/2016/09/exclusive-hillary-clinton-campaign-systematically-overcharging-poorest-donors/

“We get up to a hundred calls a day from Hillary’s low-income supporters complaining about multiple unauthorized charges,” a source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of job security, from the Wells Fargo fraud department told the Observer.

http://news.hjnews.com/logan_hj/editor-s-corner-why-does-hj-occasionally-use-anonymous-sources/article_5219447e-27b5-5dc0-a148-74bb0fcecdc0.html

Some years ago, a USU journalism professor brought legendary newsman Jack Anderson to Logan to give a talk about covering Washington politics for more than 50 years, including his role in breaking several stories in the Watergate scandal.

After the talk, Anderson visited the Herald Journal newsroom to share his wisdom with our young staff, and one of the questions asked of the Pulitzer Prize winner was what he thought about using anonymous sources.

“Anonymous sources are the only sources,” Anderson responded

non-journalists confirmed

[VomKriege]

Derek Smart now teasing, or mindfucking Citizens with, a future NY Times article about the game.

The whole "Real sources are not anonymous !" shitfest is exactly the same than last year with the Escapist article. When elaborating on their source vetting, the inquisitors just moved their goalposts. Ex-employee sources named ? Obviously disgruntled and bitter people lying through their teeths, etc...

I think the Escapist made the mistake of writing down in that article very serious allegations (discriminatory hiring practices, racist remarks) which were thrown a bit as an aside. Such claims are hard to prove as it is, even worse going with with a couple of sources and this was guaranteed to ignite kneejerk reactions and a pushback by the company.

[recursivelyenumerable]

The Star Citizen drama seems to have a wider appeal than the game itself, maybe they can find a way to monetize that.

[VomKriege]

George Broussard ‏@georgeb3dr 27 sept.
No professional developer I know would recommend you continue buying $$$ spaceships in Star Citizen. That said, have fun. It’s your $.

https://twitter.com/georgeb3dr/status/780848073253658624

[benjipwns]

George Broussard ‏@georgeb3dr  Sep 27
@lowtax @dsmart Video games are no joke motherfucker.

[VomKriege]

Reddit and the official forums are having a mini-meltdown over the reveal that speeds of the spaceships was gonna be decreased and how the scanning mechanic will work (a "gulf swing" interaction, a tad less elaborate than the fancy design doc).

Lots of outcry of the game being turned "arcade" for the "masses" (Wasn't some faithful claiming the game already had appeal to the masses to the tune of rivaling WoW ?), but it seems more like the dream of ridiculously complex simultaneous mechanics colliding with the wall of reality and deliverables.

New article on Kotaku about Star Marine :
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/29/what-happened-to-star-marine-star-citizens-missing-module

From the earliest days of development, CIG had made heavy use of contractors: CIG had used them when building a prototype to show investors, and when CIG was struggling to hire staff at its US studios, the company leaned on contractors to cover the gap. While CIG had only 48 internal staff, in October 2013 it was employing a further 91 contractors.

Well, that helps put "The early years can't be counted as development because they were 3 and a half working on the game" to bed. Plenty of details about the outside contractors headcount.

“Initially, because Chris wanted to get things delivered so quickly, he went to a lot of different outsourcers,” Erin Roberts, global head of production, told me. “It did become quite apparent early on that we weren’t getting the kind of results [we wanted], either technically or visually, and it would need so much more extra bandwidth.”

Internal expectations of a rapid release ? LIES !

Animation rigs were shared across all of the studios working on Star Citizen. These skeletons could be slotted inside a character model and animators could create animations they needed for their specific aspect of the game. (...) “If anyone in the core CIG team changed one of those rigs, they needed to retarget every single animation to the new skeleton.” CIG did that “several times”, which was “an absolute pain in the ass for the animation team”.

When I brought this up with Roberts, he explained that internal problems CIG had caused this. When Illfonic started work on Star Marine, they were using a character model that had been created by the Austin character team. However, Roberts tells me, “we weren't particularly happy with the output we were getting in Austin”, so character production was moved to the UK, where CIG “had the opportunity to hire people who had experience with CryEngine”. Roberts explained that this led to the UK team creating a new character model (and the skeleton to go with it) from scanning real-life actors, which was on a slightly different scale to the previous ones. This meant that all the animators had to retarget their animations.

Not a game dev but that sound like a lot of carts were put before horses.

[VomKriege]

Well, that "golf swing" scanning mechanic thread got up to 30 pages and was sent by RSI moderators to the Concern subsection to die...

Closing piece by Kotaku on the Star Citizen coverage.
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/30/what-to-make-of-star-citizen

On the plus side for the project supporters :

For the record, we did look into all kinds of wild claims about how Cloud Imperium Games is spending its money, and found nothing reportable.

It is difficult, after all these months of research and having heard from so many people involved with the project, to seriously entertain the notion that Star Citizen is some kind of intentional scam.

So, here goes: based on all the evidence, I believe there is a decent chance that Star Citizen will make it to some form of release. But I don’t think it will happen within the next couple of years

And for skeptics :

Expectation versus reality appears to be a problem on both the developer and backer sides of Star Citizen.

Hold-ups, company restructures, personality clashes within studios and – and by his own admission – the perfectionism of Chris Roberts, Star Citizen’s creative figurehead, have all been the source of delays. For the first several years, Cloud Imperium Games simply did not have the resources to make Star Citizen as Roberts envisioned it. According to those at the studio now, that has changed, and they are finally in a position to push forward. But the amount of time and money has been expended in the meantime, even by the most conservative calculations, is enough to make anyone wince.

[CatsCatsCats]

So it will come out, eventually, be disappointing and already surpassed by other titles.

[Trent Dole]

Haha even George is saying 'guys, no'.

[bluemax]

This is a cry for help.

[VomKriege]

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/7070882/#Comment_7070882

[bluemax]

I think the best thing about the Kotaku thing is it sheds light on what RSI/CIG have been doing (a clusterfuck of management) while making Derek Smart's conspiracies look pretty dumb.

[VomKriege]

They actually have a poo poo ton of QA. I don't harp on about it too much, but I know someone in the UK games industry, and crobbleco has been serial poaching some amazing talent and dumping them on QA duty.

QA for lovely mocap that is.

Not joking. Virtually all their QA staff spend their days watching and reporting on what I've been told is some of the worst written and buggiest cutscene tripe they've ever seen

Stolen from SA.
Anyhow Citcon is coming and the obligatory concept ship sale is the Polaris Corvette : only 750$, jump in !

[The Sceneman]

the chick on the left tho

[VomKriege]

https://twitter.com/Clifford_Miku/status/782988915275948032/photo/1

Those things cost 119$ minimum  and he is supposedly sending it (or similar gifts) on the regular ? 

https://www.ediblearrangements.com/fruit-gifts/salted-caramel-harvest-party-3878

[VomKriege]

Derek Smart is probably going offline with the storm coming to US shores, so today he entered one of his wildest fire and brimstone trances : he was given a scene by scene account of what's fake in the Gamescom demo, IRS coming in on CIG, sources telling him that SC is moving to an outright fraud, funding tracker is deceiving, stay tuned for his next blogpost... you know the drill.

He's probably making mountains out of molehills again.

Meanwhile :
How much have you spent in Star Citizen

With over half the people responding to the poll claiming they're in for a grand or more...
In fact, with such sums, it's not hard to see how the funding could be coming mainly from a few thousand whales.

[VomKriege]

His "white paper".

[VomKriege]

CitizenCon today...

https://www.twitch.tv/thedereksmart

 

EDIT : Apparently he can't get the official stream image to be displayed on his own.

EDIT : Sandi Gardiner-Roberts crying. Again.

EDIT : 363 direct employees across their four studios as of today.

EDIT : Croberts faffed about doing a recap ("4 years into development" his words) but now some dude is speaking about forums and "orgs 2.1" that let people organize guilds since 3 years. What ? No gameplay or trailer presented so far. Are they stalling ? Holy christ. I can get getting some of the juicy stuff to close but man.

Derek Smart : "OK Guys I don't know what to say"

EDIT : Powerpoint Citizen !

EDIT : Ship sale trailer.

EDIT : New patcher coming soon™ to finally stop backers having to download 20+ Go of data for every revision.

Squadron 42
"Over 20h of performance capture, 1255 pages of dialogue, 343 speaking roles"
No AI yet, "all chapters grey boxed", no footage will be shown now, no release date.

Now discussing SC Alpha 2.6 and Star Marine.
2 maps and 2 gamemodes fo Star Marine.
Mining in Alpha 3.1, Salvage in 3.2, Farming in 3.3... 4.0 Jump points and multiple systems. And ships, ships, ships. "Roadmap for the next year" 2.6 isn't even being tested by the advance alpha backers !

No gameplay footage for Star Citizen (?)

EDIT : A video of their procedural generation technology for planets. Roberts : "Not fake ! I know, hard to believe !" 

EDIT : Even the official forums aren't too hyped.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/349218/so-no-sq42-footage-at-cizencon

EDIT : Some footage of a ship landing and a character using his buggy to explore the PG planet. Dude get ambushed. Shot 4 guys through a scope. Use a space motorbike.

Inspect some wrecks. See some giant Dune sand worms (WTF ? ). A sandstorm.

EDIT : Chris yelling "JUST DO IT" for the third time. 

A couple shots but god is it boring. Scripted stealth knife kill of a sand guy from Star Wars. Terrible editing at the end. Ending segment playing twice while Chris assures it's not scripted ?

Quiet audience.

EDIT: Dev showing the editor, warp, footage of another planet. Warp. Ships. Fade to black.

Chris Roberts : "In a year's time !". 12 more months of funding ahead...

OK they're wrapping up. "JUST DO IT !" again from Chris
No SQ42 footage, no direct SC footage, an alpha that will stretch to "4.0" and unless I missed something, no release dates announced for anything.

---

Yet another thread by someone with zero understanding of the technical achievement CIG just displayed.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/7102823/#Comment_7102823

Regardless of the fact that we all KNEW SQ-42 wasn't coming out this year and the fact the we KNEW 2.6 wasn't ready yet, people still had it in their heads that we were going to see one or both.

That's a completely unrealistic expectation and you cannot fault anyone but yourself (not the op but people in general) if you hyped yourself that hard

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/7102251/#Comment_7102251

August 20th 2016

Just a quick note, in the presentation Chris states 3.0 is the end of the year release, and jokes that he hopes it won't be December 19th like last year.

https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15475-Gamescom-2016-Presentation

[bluemax]

(Image removed from quote.)

His "white paper".

First two posts, TLDR, lulz.

You know it isn't exciting when even other fanboys won't read it.

[VomKriege]

---

EDIT :

[Joe Molotov]

Cock blocked by Chris Roberts. 

[Great Rumbler]

I wonder if his wife knows that that $2,500 was definitely not an "investment?"

[VomKriege]

20 hours of mocap for a single player game with 28 chapters / 60 missions : sick MGS4 balance breh.

Otherwise missed deadlines everywhere (on top of everything, one may remember that less than a year ago CIG promised monthly patches to the Star Citizen alpha...) and Chris Roberts joking nervously several times that he won't give any dates anymore : the CIG narrative in response to the Kotaku UK article that they ironed out their project management problem is a bit hard to believe.

If their funding tracker is accurate, the latest ship sale tanked after a single day. It sold 2000+* units and made 1.5m$ on release (to note however that it was sold at a slight discount on its first day, under the condition that no store credit could be used, only fresh cash...), but the following day the funding felt back to sub 350k$. CIG will need to have aggressive sales otherwise funding may contract quite a bit YoY, while their expanses are probably going up (20% rise for in house employees). They probably have a couple of trump cards like selling the massive spacefighter carrier, if push comes to shove. No Smart but I wouldn't be too surprised if they start running on fumes in 2017.

* Which lends credence to the possibility that only a few thousand whales could be sustaining much of the funding.

[bluemax]

Remember when this was a couple hundred grand for a single player space sim with no mo cap or anything? Sigh.

[recursivelyenumerable]

I just appreciate that our civilization has advanced to another level of meta-abstraction: while lots of backward people still think paying lots of money for imaginary items is already weird, cybersophisticates can enjoy the thrill of spending big on imaginary imaginary items. But how can we ascend to further levels yet?

[bluemax]

I just appreciate that our civilization has advanced to another level of meta-abstraction: while lots of backward people still think paying lots of money for imaginary items is already weird, cybersophisticates can enjoy the thrill of spending big on imaginary imaginary items. But how can we ascend to further levels yet?

Pay me money for items you haven't even considered yet for a game I haven't even planned!

[VomKriege]

Funding tracker had an uptake to 650k, just to be fair with regards to their latest ship sale. Last quarter is generally the big bucks period for CIG, when they amass the most excess funding.

[benjipwns]

(Image removed from quote.)

why are you posting images from Herbalife support forums in the Star Citizen thread?

[VomKriege]

Hey guys!

Its a friend of mines Birthday, and hes having a pretty shitty one. I decided to buy him and myself Star Citizen to cheer him up, but apparently I cant gift him it for 30 days?

Is this right? Any way to make his birthday a little better without being a month late?

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/56y2p1/gifting_early/

Because your account is new, you can't gift the pack you bought to his account for 30 days. Since it's the first purchase and within the 14-day refund period, you might be able to get a refund on the extra package, and give him the money to buy his own so he can play immediately.
(...)
Make sure you explain the situation clearly, I know of at least one instance where someone had their entire account refunded and closed instead of the stuff they asked for.

Also be aware that the concept of refunds (even partial) is a bit of a touchy subject.

---

Star Citizen's 'Squadron 42' Single Player Campaign Delayed Until Some Future Undefined Date

Update
Per the request of many readers, I’ve changed the headline. Before it read “indefinitely” which means “for an unlimited or unspecified period of time” according to the dictionary and, you know, the English language.

[VomKriege]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/56z5ew/random_things_i_learned_from_chris/

Random Things I learned from Chris

I talked to Chris for a bit at the Arsenal Bar. I learned a couple interesting things about Star Citizen that were of some interest to me. These may have been shared somewhere else so I apologize in advance if they are common knowledge. I hope I'm not revealing anything said in confidence. I didn't think it was so I thought it would be OKAY to share.

Idris Update

    It's not necessarily being withheld from backers because of SQ42 (I've read this a lot so I asked)
    Idris is missing Items 2.0 stuff like doors, etc. being wired up properly so it's not completed yet
    Idris is so large with the number of items and complexity it's spawning would cause the PU servers to struggle. The example he gave was how the Starfarer already causes current servers to struggle and image how much more so with the Idris being so much larger and more complex. This means StarNetwork (net code) has to be completed and polished.
    Chris doesn't want to put it into the PU until the StarNetwork (net code) can supported at minimum two Idris (Idri?) and several other ships so there can be a good battle between them. It's no fun for there to be just one in the game. It's inclusion needs to provide fun and meaning. So the back-end needs to comfortably support more than one Idris.
    The Idris has 50~ NPCs living on it in SQ42

Capital Ship NPC Crews

In the long term, you should be able to fly the larger ships without other players using just NPCs; it just will be very limited in efficiency and quality. Obviously, NPCs will be far less quality than humans since they will be able to plan and react instantly to your commands. This gave me hope concerning the numerous multi-crew ships I've pledged.

Star Marine

SataBall is coming in the future

Idris is not even the biggest ship in game 

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/56z5ew/random_things_i_learned_from_chris/d8ns6no

All us Idris owners have wanted for literally years is answers on expectations of on delivery for a $1000+ virtual spaceship that due to repeated miscommunications we've been told to expect Soon™ for year after year.

Yes, you obviously have it hard seeing your $1000 pledge grow 3x the size, and almost match the $2500 unarmed Javelins that people have pledged for. I feel soooo sorry for you.

[VomKriege]

Rumors of CIG telling devs (Frankfurt ?) they will have to move east, maybe Brno in Czech Republic. SAwful sources which are hit and miss, so... Smart is railing about imminent layoffs.

[VomKriege]

Latest Derek Smart blog is about his future articles that will no doubt contain mindblowing whistleblowing (or not). Not much to see here, but this part made me chuckle :

Next up was Turbulent (the guys who built the game’s website, backend, and community systems). Intro aside, that one droned on for a whopping 25 (!) minutes; which seemed like an eternity, seeing as people were waiting for the main event. (...) At the end of the presentation, hardly anyone was clapping. And if you listening closely, you will hear one of the devs on stage say “Johnny’s not going on stage again“. Yikes.

[VomKriege]

http://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-hardcore-fanbase-keeping-the-star-citizen-dream-alive/

We spent CitizenCon with the game’s most dedicated backers to find out why they still believe.

It's a good writeup of a reporter being at CitizenCon.

First comment tho

What they showed off in those last videos already looks better than any game ever made. I have complete faith in Star Citizen.

[a slime appears]

can we plz rename thread to "STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE"

[VomKriege]

 

[Yulwei]

http://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-hardcore-fanbase-keeping-the-star-citizen-dream-alive/

We spent CitizenCon with the game’s most dedicated backers to find out why they still believe.

It's a good writeup of a reporter being at CitizenCon.

First comment tho

What they showed off in those last videos already looks better than any game ever made. I have complete faith in Star Citizen.

Notacultnotacult

[VomKriege]

Someone tried to trade an engagement ring for a Star Citizen JPEG ship
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/58t142/has_trading_gone_too_far/

Does seem possible that he got a good deal on the ring, it didn't work out and is trying to trade a $300 ring up to a $600 Glaive.

What a time to be alive, etc...

Some backers are also fine with waiting until 2022 (!)
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/351518/general-discussion-on-how-long-is-to-long

[benjipwns]

So sad that some people in the comment section are trashing this game ever since the NMS debacle happened. I bet even when the Star Citizen 3.0 patch comes out, these people still trash the game and call it a scam.

[Joe Molotov]

Someone tried to trade an engagement ring for a Star Citizen JPEG ship
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/58t142/has_trading_gone_too_far/

TheGallery 8 points 2 days ago
Sorry bro, but jewelry is, inherently, nearly worthless. The only reason it's so pricey in the first place is because of marketing and a controlled importation system. The ring isn't even WORTH half as much as what you bought it for.

[Rufus]

That is too good.

[bluemax]

This thread is gold:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/592llu/if_cig_thinks_2016_isnt_likely_for_30_anymore/

[VomKriege]

Im a Chef. I cook a lot of chicken. If I'm cooking a piece of chicken and its not finished even though the customer was told it'd only take so long, should I just give them half raw chicken because it was "promised" to only take so long? You cant just set a timer, there are different thicknesses that require longer than normal, the grill may be recovering heat from something else that was recently done to it, etc.

That is what a lot of people are asking for. The same people I'd bet that ripped into companies like EA for releasing games too early. The same people that'd likely get really sick if they ate half raw chicken as well...

I wrote almost a whole page trying to explain what was wrong with your arguments and deleted it again:

Long story short; Some of you guys are in the wrong community; call of duty is searching.

[VomKriege]

[VomKriege]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4699709&viewfull=1#post4699709

* They're planning a new crowdfunding project

[Note from myself : alleged rumor being reported (on SA I guess)]

2019...

They said I was dead. They said PC was the future. Now they say VR is the future. I am a console/mobile hybrid game with exciting micro-transactions.

<A city street, a car screeches to a halt, Chris Roberts is sitting in the driving seat, he steps out - car screeches away>

Hi, I'm Chris Roberts. A few years ago I was making a crowd-funded PC game until I got burnt out and took a break. Now I'm back with City Citizen the best damn city car theft auto mobile hybrid game with micro-transactions ever.

[VomKriege]

So there's a new rounds of rumors, but really not a lot of it is that interesting. "Insiders" quoted by Smart or SA members have had a bit of a spotty record, to be fair, and most of the rumours amount to "Shit is late, broken and they cannot possibly release within expected deadlines" which everyone can conclude by himself. The only claim that could be possibly verified is the repeated insistance that CIG will try to push through a "prelude" to the single player game next year, instead of the full release they can't possibly complete. I'm only quoting the following because it's a funny anecdote (or hate fan fic).

Went out drinking with a friend last night..

“We are, we do! Work towards something. We work hard at making progress. We do! But that progress is changed every week. Every day sometimes. How can anything ever be finished if entire teams of employees are retasked at any moment? People lose momentum. You lose sight of what the project is. It just becomes one unfinished thing after another. One of Roberts’ lackeys tells you to drop something, you do. Then two weeks later Roberts is screaming at some poor guy because he did as he was told. “Not by me.” That’s the response you hear a lot from Roberts.”

“The best one, absolutely, deals with [a brand new employee]. It’s his, what, third day? He’s in the break room and Roberts storms in but is real quiet. Pulls the guy out and walks him in front of some other workstation. “What is this?” Roberts goes. The new guy, right outta college, is shitting himself. What could Roberts mean? Was something wrong with the desk? Was this where he’s supposed to be sitting? He’s got no idea.

“You know what this costs? You’re taking my time, everyone’s time,” and now Roberts is shouting, “it’s like you don’t care how much you’re costing us. Do you like spending my money?” Chris stands there, arms crossed, waiting for a response.

[The new guy] is scared stupid. He starts blubbering and apologising without having any idea what’s going on, right?

Chris points to the chair, “Sit your ass down and get it right.” He then storms off again. Poor guy has no idea what the fuck to do.

Turns out Chris thought he was [completely different employee]. He never apologised. Never went back to check if anything was fixed. [New guy] quit by week three.”

[benjipwns]

good i don't want any of these layabouts who think they can just jump into game development without being able to handle problems when they're put in front of them

[a slime appears]

Went out drinking with a friend last night..

“We are, we do! Work towards something. We work hard at making progress. We do! But that progress is changed every week. Every day sometimes. How can anything ever be finished if entire teams of employees are retasked at any moment? People lose momentum. You lose sight of what the project is. It just becomes one unfinished thing after another. One of Roberts’ lackeys tells you to drop something, you do. Then two weeks later Roberts is screaming at some poor guy because he did as he was told. “Not by me.” That’s the response you hear a lot from Roberts.”

“The best one, absolutely, deals with [a brand new employee]. It’s his, what, third day? He’s in the break room and Roberts storms in but is real quiet. Pulls the guy out and walks him in front of some other workstation. “What is this?” Roberts goes. The new guy, right outta college, is shitting himself. What could Roberts mean? Was something wrong with the desk? Was this where he’s supposed to be sitting? He’s got no idea.

“You know what this costs? You’re taking my time, everyone’s time,” and now Roberts is shouting, “it’s like you don’t care how much you’re costing us. Do you like spending my money?” Chris stands there, arms crossed, waiting for a response.

[The new guy] is scared stupid. He starts blubbering and apologising without having any idea what’s going on, right?

Chris points to the chair, “Sit your ass down and get it right.” He then storms off again. Poor guy has no idea what the fuck to do.

Turns out Chris thought he was [completely different employee]. He never apologised. Never went back to check if anything was fixed. [New guy] quit by week three.”

It feels like a manufactured story with an irate insane boss with no idea of who works for him and he takes it out on a brand new employee who has no idea what's going on. That's too fucking money to be true.

[Great Rumbler]

It's too crazy to be true, but it's probably true.

[VomKriege]

Today in the Verse : People freaking out at the idea SQ42 might be ported to consoles.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/353198/since-sq42-is-planned-for-console-as-well-is-it-holding-up-the-pc-release

Consoles?

If that's true, I want a refund. IF I wanted half assed console games, I would of bought something from Activision or EA.

I really hope this isn't true...

That would explain a lot of stuff they do - to get the game more and more arcade-ish.

Don't be a rumor mongerer

EDIT

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5a0ti9/first_attempt_at_editing_software/

First attempt at editing software

[bluemax]

How I traded virtual space ships for a real car:

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/i-sold-my-star-citizen-fleet-to-finance-a-new-car

[VomKriege]

From the bulletpoint recap of the latest "Around the Verse"...

Chris is back from Europe after doing some 3.0 mocap and meetings.

 
https://youtu.be/9Xy5pz7V7rI?t=28m7s

At least there's some news on the FPS module Star Marine,

Star Marine is being tested daily with QA
(...)
Combat emotes are hooked up to allow signally to friends to taunting enemies.
(...)
Star Marine is going to be a more tactical FPS.
Lighting won’t be designed to contrast the player, instead to be more realistic.
When lighting maps, thought went out to how it would have been lit - ie. how would the pirates have lit this?

[Sho Nuff]

When lighting maps, thought went out to how it would have been lit - ie. how would the pirates have lit this?

 

HOW INDEED

[VomKriege]

So... CIG is having another discount for certain ships if you pay with cash (and not with store credits and / or exchanging ships you already own). That's the second time they do so, I seem to recall there was one just before the latest CitCon.

In itself it doesn't prove anything but one cannot help but wonder if this newfound compulsion to funnel specifically fresh liquidities isn't indicative of a cash flow problem.

Also not guaranteed to please many of the older backers as the selling pitch back then was that the earlier you got in, the best deal you had.

[VomKriege]

To illustrate my above point, it seems the latest sales pitch now only say price "may" increase, not that they "will" :

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/7207235/#Comment_7207235

One elephant in the room with all this is exactly how prevalent store credits are ? You can "melt" (exchange, really) your owned ships into another, gain some store credit if your target ship is less expensive, and the big backers are apparently not shy doing this. A lot of the early backers also say they put the cash in advance with the guarantee that they could always switch their ships later in development when it would be clearer what specs they had.

Maybe I'm dense, but could CIG count those ships bought with store credits in their funding tracker, even if it means they didn't perceive fresh cash for it, to inflate the numbers a bit ?

Beyond any debate of potential wrongdoing (because it could just be CIG being terrible at reading the crowd, I wouldn't be that surprised, always got the impression Roberts got a bit lucky striking that gold vein), running such an agressive business for so long was bound to become a problem eventually.

Or they're trying to undercut the grey market and capture some of the cash going to "middlemen" ?

EDIT : Oh and apparently some Squadron 42 footage dropped in today's show...



I know it's placeholder (for mocap animations, as is being told) but  don't you have anything else to show for a single player game supposedly shipping next year ? The latest monthly report claims they're entering "final art" stage...