Poll of the Day > I think Chris Roberts is the problem with Star Citizen

(+) Yeah! (+)

I am a whale on that game, not in the very top for sure, but enough for like all of you to call me stupid.

But I think all its problems are related to Chris Roberts. His earlier games Freelancer and Wing Commander were hits of their time, but looked pretty bad and that was the biggest criticisms. I believe thats the primary drive of him pushing the game to be more and more and making it take a lot longer than it needs to to come out. I mean its still in a decent time frame(yes, it is). I mean look at Diablo 3, that game was in development for 11 years and they already had the engine and some assets to work with. Star Citizen started with nothing but an idea in October of 2012 so its only been worked on for ten years, Of that it grow from its original project due to its funding so technically less than that.

I just wish Chris Roberts could see a game doesn't have to be perfect to release and can be worked on AFTER the fact. Its like he wants a game to be a 5 year old game with 2 expansions and a major graphic overhaul at RELEASE. I think thats the main problem.

I think the problem is the whole crowdfunding development model. And I say that as someone who has backed several crowdfunded projects.

Investors and publishers who are throwing money at the developer to create a product require some level of transparency with the development process, so they can track how their money is being used. They can make demands based on their level of involvement or investment, and pull their funding, or even scrap the project if they feel they are not getting a good return on their investment.

Traditionally, video game development takes place behind closed doors, with investors and publishers getting previews of alpha builds, gameplay mechanics, character arcs, entire quest lines, et cetera, that may end up being cut from the game entirely, with consumers being none-the-wiser, never knowing what they "missed out" on.

With crowdfunding, the transparency is passed on to these "microinvestors", and as a result, to the internet at large. It's a much more open development process, and I'd argue that it's detrimental to the overall development.

If the devs are too open with their ideas, they may share things that prove too difficult or too costly to implement, and risk alienating enthusiastic fans if they ask for more time and money to put these things in the game, or face backlash if they backpedal on putting said features in.

The same has happened under "traditionally" developed games (see No Man's Sky, or any Peter Molyneux project, for examples), but it's much more common under the crowdfunding model.

Yeah, I agree with everything you said. Thats the problem with people saying Star Citizen is taking so long to come out. Its because they saw the WHOLE timeline. Unless something gets leaked, almost all games are announced once they are pretty close to be done. And Truth be told, as mentioned in my first post, Star Citizen is probably making GREAT time considering they are making a VERY large game from scratch.

But I still want Chris Roberts off the project.

Yeah I'd liken him to Sean Murray from Hello Games, who became sorta the "face" for No Man's Sky.

He kept getting out there in interviews and gushing about the game, and to his credit I truly feel he was just excited for the product and wanted to deliver a specific vision of the game to the fans, but his enthusiasm was unrealistic when faced with a release deadline.

NMS is almost the reverse of Star Citizen, where eventually they said "okay, we gotta deliver a finalized product at some point" (likely due to pressure from Sony). So they released a game that was missing several promised features, and the blowback was huge at the time.

What we're seeing with Star Citizen is very similar, but since the "whale" investors are a conglomerate of people who threw in a few hundred/thousand bucks, there is a lack of pressure on the developers to deliver the final game.

Kudos to Sony for sticking with NMS and helping Hello deliver on all those promises. The game saw multiple free updates that vastly improved the overall game. It would be nice if the same would happen with Star Citizen but I'm not sure they would have the same post-release support without some heavy hitter publisher or angel investor stepping up to the plate.

fwiw I've exercised an abundance of patience and kept my expectations low with every crowdfunding project that I've backed, to avoid burnout and "letdown"

I kinda prefer to just forget about the project I've backed until it's released. But that's much easier to do when the financial commitment is like $50. I truly feel for those who pledge thousands in support. It's gotta be frustrating to watch the project languish with only trickles of information on how the game is coming along

Far-Queue posted...

It would be nice if the same would happen with Star Citizen but I'm not sure they would have the same post-release support without some heavy hitter publisher or angel investor stepping up to the plate.

I personally think they would be fine once it releases. They are making an interesting game that once its out I believe a lot of people would get behind and buy it. And most of the people who bought in to it will most likely try to get their money's worth. Which in most cases will cause more people in due to the high player base.

You'd know better than I.

I haven't been following Star Citizen's development as closely as you have. Have no idea what their player engagement levels are and such, but I've heard that there's people who spend tons on various ships and things so I'm inclined to believe you

Far-Queue posted...

You'd know better than I.

I haven't been following Star Citizen's development as closely as you have. Have no idea what their player engagement levels are and such, but I've heard that there's people who spend tons on various ships and things so I'm inclined to believe you

Well currently I wouldnt say its a completed game by any means, but it has plenty of content and nice game loops that have people playing it now pretty regularly. The main reason I don't play it much is because the game resets every major update. I am the type that has to play towards something and if that is taken away every few months I get bored.

In its current state, if you like FPS games, Trucking sims, Flight sims, or elite dangerous you would most likely get enjoyment with Start Citizen as it is. The game is balanced pretty well for the most part. The bigger ships need crews to make them worth while so the smaller ships are king. Like I have a literal gun boat that requires a crew of 7, one pilot and 6 gunners. Fully crewed the thing is unstoppable and good luck getting near it. But good luck me trying to find 6 people currently that just want to sit in a turret. That and the pilot has ZERO control over any guns in that ship. When the game goes live I will be able to hire NPCs or pay a crap tone for AI driving "blades" that can handle the guns for me.

Crowdfunding is definitely the problem. I have backed a few projects. One of them was a scam (developer went dark and never offered refunds), two of them took 3-5 years after their due date to deliver, and the other 2 actually went well. However, the ones that went well didn't even offer crowd funding until they had a finished product and needed the money for publishing. They also are "experienced" in crowd funding projects and have a good record of delivering on time or only a few months late.

Star Citizen sounds like a great game if it is completed as promised, but that any reasonable person knows can't be done in the deadlines they set, or with the money they are asking.

I'm very interested in Star Citizen, but last time I checked it was PC-only and I currently do not own a gaming PC, and have no plans to get one

Star Citizen and Tarkov are two games that I'm kinda wishing I had a PC setup for. They both seem really fun.

How close is it to resembling an actual game? Ive heard about people buying ships for thousands of dollars, is there even anything to do with them?

Also Diablo 3 was not in development for 11 years, not even close. It was more like 5. Blizzard North had been working on a very different Diablo 3 that got scrapped fairly early in production when they closed down Blizzard North.

edit: Your ship crew has to be actual players? I get what theyre going for there but thats just bad game design.

VampireCoyote posted...

How close is it to resembling an actual game? Ive heard about people buying ships for thousands of dollars, is there even anything to do with them?

I haven't played it but I've watched people on Steam play it and there's a bunch of content in the game already

Yeah you can currently do everything that you can do in elite dangerous, just not the scale of the universe yet

Far-Queue posted...

I think the problem is the whole crowdfunding development model.

This.

As long as people keep throwing money at him, he has no real motivation to actually finish the project. And past a certain point it's become essentially impossible for the game to ever live up to expectations, so it actually becomes far more of a good idea (for him) to pospone development entirely and never pay off on a finished project.

If all they need to do is release an occasional sop or other distraction to keep the income flowing, there's no real reason to ever finish the game. So they won't.

And the worst part is, even if there was sufficient pressure to finally pull the trigger on it for good, it would never guarantee an actual worthwhile game. You'd most likely just get something on par with Duke Nukem Forever crapped out so everyone involved could claim that they eventually paid off on their obligations (even if everyone hates it).

I'm convinced that Star Citizen started out as a sincere attempt to crowdfund a game, but it's turned into a very successful scam and that isn't likely to change.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm convinced that Star Citizen started out as a sincere attempt to crowdfund a game, but it's turned into a very successful scam and that isn't likely to change

The thing is, everything they promised is in the beta at this time. The only thing missing is the procedural planets and the size of the universe. Which they are currently working on and have shown improvements to each with every update.

VampireCoyote posted...

How close is it to resembling an actual game? Ive heard about people buying ships for thousands of dollars, is there even anything to do with them?

@VampireCoyote

Here is the first video when I search for "StarCitizen gameplay"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYHR0oPXDn0

Skipped around the video, there was some objects going through others, like plants, but other than that I would say it looks pretty good with stuff to do.

That isnt how to hold a space rifle