Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 251 points – Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN
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Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN::Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has said Squadron 42, the single-player portion of its controversial space sim, is finally “feature complete”, over a decade after it was announced.

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Once I can buy it, and download it, then install it, then open it, configure my settings, create my characters, and start the campaign, then, and ONLY THEN will I believe it.

I'm still not sure I would believe it at that point.

You got to at least complete the two missions going through the elevators twice each. Then its legit.

This is the best take on here. There's no more "just trust me bro" tolerance anymore, too many things have just turned into vaporware over the years and now until I physically see it, it doesn't exist

Very excite. Now they can start working on star citizen

Key part is that its not to start working on SC but the gate keeping of tech from sq42 to SC is open. What was showcased this weekend will start to be ported into SC.

Yeah, all the devs moving over and dedicating time to integrating already built modules with the game. Big cums

They also showed off their server meshing tech actually working, which is one of the largest hurdles for the persistent universe bit of star citizen.

Cyberpunk had 11 years of development if we consider 2.0 to be the version that should have been what we got on release day.

S42 better be dam freaking legendary and rival Cyberpunk for story, gameplay, mechanics, graphics, etc. considering it's going to likely equal the development time.

Cyberpunk development started in 2016, so 8 years if we are counting up to now.

You want it to rival Cyberpunk for story, gameplay, and mechanics? Yikes.

10+ years development and the biggest budget ever... seems pretty fair to have really high expectations.

Why do you care?

I can tell you why I care. Maybe you don't care but I'll tell you anyway. Because this sort of bullshit people lap up blindly and let the industry set it as a new standard. Can we milk users for in-game ships for a game that doesn't exist for a decade? Do I want that for the future of gaming? Pay now for the upcoming necromancer in the upcoming Diablo 6 that's been in the making for 10 years! This funding model is predatory and the game is already primed to be soaked through with Eve-level of toxicity.

You should care. It's your gaming too.

Before reeeeeee, note that I don't attack anyone's enjoyment of the "game".

I do care. I cared so much that I was a games journo for over 5 years. I love gaming. Always have always will.

I'm well over 50. My first gaming devices predate the 2600. Calling this predatory is hyperbole. People are not paying now to play later. They are paying now to play a title in development. That's not the future of gaming. This is the present. Diabolo 6's bs isn't really an apt example. I can give you a much better, more relevant and apt example: Watframe. Warframe used exactly the same funding model as SC and was nowhere near complete for almost a decade - people still played it to the point that it successfully ran its own convention over multiple years. Now it's feature complete and has dropped multiple addons and expansions. Would that have happened without audience financial participation? I don't think so. Hell, no studios of scale or pubs believed in it and Dark Sector had to be so heavily bastardised to fit with the FPS warshooter trend to even get published. If Digital Extremes didn't shift models to crowd funding they would have died. Cloud Imperium are making a very specific game for a very specific audience and they are smart to sell directly to that audience. That money has no negative impact on you and has a positive net effect on the industry - lots of people are being employed across different nations and lots of others are also earning money in audience participation (bloggers, influencers, convention staff etc).

This is the present for this niche audience but if it becomes a way for more games of greater variety to reach the audiences that will pay for the specific experiences they want while being able to avoid all the bs associated with seasonal trends and ridiculous short shelf lives leading to crazily overreaching copy protection and awful cycles of boom/bust hire/fire/studio closure I'm all for it.

Warframe never had this level of bullshit. The ratio of cash:dev lead time wasn't remotely close. I played Warframe for ages and their funding model very quickly crystalized into a very transparent and rewarding model. "Wanna support us? Buy skins, frame slots, gun slots, etc" their early funding didn't even register as a blip on the radar when compared to the sheer millions of dollars dumped into SC just so they can deliver nothing close to their promise.

The "this is the present" schtick is nice and all but that exact same "niche" audience that's waiting for sc is waiting in Eve online, for it's true successor and are getting more and more disenfranchised. That money has a negative impact on me directly because those millions could have gone to a better place for gamer, instead of being in perpetual escrow In a tech-demo-game that is now filled by such zealots that any mention of refusal to accept this so called new dogshit status quo gets their Spidey Senses tingling the same way a Musk enthusiast rallies to defend him.

You care that the bloggers, influencers and convention staff are getting jobs to shovel this game, that's cool, you've spent time in the industry and they're maybe your people. I'm not going to put a gun to my own head and say that giving people jobs is a bad move in trying to counter this point.

All the stuff you're talking about in your last paragraph, SC isn't going to avoid any of it from where I'm standing. It's either going to flame out on launch, or it's going to be jam packed with the original whales that will grief beyond all measure.

I hope I'm fucking wrong about all this and I'm just a jaded lil bitch. I hope we get another NMS that is redeemed to that same degree. Until then, remember, no pre-orders.

Why do you care why they care?

I asked the question honestly. I want to know why they care.

You genuinely want to know why someone would care if a game is good or not after waiting 10+ years?

Cyberpunk is still awful. Of course, didn't played yet.

It's amazing. One of the best games I've ever played

Well, then you probably haven't played many games.

Cyberpunk is easily one of the best games I've ever played.

Good for you, guys. Still has nothing to do with my last comment

Hasnt played the game, but knows its bad? Sounds like you don't play good games 🤔

This game has taken so long that it's either money laundering, the devs are just incompetent, or they suffer from the inability to edit themselves down

I'm sure there have been mistakes, but calling them incompetent is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it's an absolutely eye watering amount of time and money, but they are trying to make an online universe with a high level of detail in which you can move between planets and all kinds of environments completely seamlessly. If they weren't trying to make something with such a high level of difficulty, then I suspect they would have released a finished product by now, but they are making stuff nobody has made before, at least not at this scale.

Perhaps inability to scale things back is a bit of a problem, but I think Chris Roberts realises he's not likely to get a chance to get a basically unlimited amount of money (in game dev terms) to make the ultimate dream game he and many other people always wanted, so I'd imagine that's the reason they are just going all out.

How come other ambitious early access type projects don't have this problem.

Beam.ng comes to mind, it's not complete, but the pricing is reasonable, the progress is consistent and plentiful, and the product has been in a very fun engaging state for years and years.

And beam.ng is an incredibly ambitious project aiming for very high performing and accurate solid body physics simulation.

I don't think Star citizen would get nearly the level of hate if they had a more sensical pricing scheme. $45 +$15 for the base game, ok makes sense, but then there are multiple subscription tiers, additional 1 time lifetime versions of the subscription, different shops for different subscription levels, individual ships, insurance, a mobile game like freemium/premium model (earn credits to buy real money stuff), as well as branching the single player and multiplayer experience into standalone products.

A big ambitious game is great, but no amount of tech CEO promises will make the segmented and confusing monetization scheme seem legit. The game has raised half a billion dollars. It has already made more money than 99% of games will ever make. That's enough money to pay 300 people 120k for the 13/14 years the game has been in development. They have the ability to have a large studio that rivals (or beats) large AAA studios in talent, and they have used more time than even the most notorious studios use to develop games.

Ah yes. Promotional ships that sell for $1000s of dollars irl that are only available in limited runs that you get to keep when the game launches into stable release.

Oops, forgot to mention that some of these ships might not ever be available outside of alpha besides for those that already own them. That means new players in stable will encounter ships they'll never be able to own.

Most of my friends that play it say it's a fair trade since you're paying so much for them, but it still feels largely like a scam to me. You could do so such much better for yourself with that kind of money than just owning a digital asset.

Oh and those ships? They're not tradeable to other players afaik.

Edit: This isn't really fine at all and is in fact a P2W mechanic inside a game you already have to pay for up front.

All ships (will be) earnable in-game *¹, the only difference is the insurance. Currently during special events people can buy ships with "Life Time insurance" which won't be a thing in-game.

*¹: Except special editions, which only differ in their paint job, which is totally fine IMO

How is star citizens progress not consistent and plentiful? They are pretty constantly releasing new content. Single player might be behind closed doors but the multiplayer gets all of the upgraded Tech New Missions new planet development new ships. There's a pretty steady flow of new stuff and you only need $40 to get in.

If the only thing you're interested in is the single player then that is unfortunate but it's not as if they've delivered nothing over all this time. There is a game that is playable and has a surprising amount of content that you can go play right now

I didn't say it wasn't, I also was not criticizing its content.

It's not money laundering. It's crowdfunding as a primary business model. The point isn't to finish the game, but to keep baiting people with carrots-on-sticks until they get sick of the grift and the money dries up.

I can't imagine still thinking this after seeing that the game is actually releasing...

I was coming in here to see if the positivity actually carries over to various places as I was surprised to see all the positive YouTube comments on ign, but lemmy always seems to have a extra serving of negativity in all things... Oh well.

Don't deprive yourself of a good time, if you have the means to play it I would absolutely check out star citizen when they have their free to play events.

Oh shit it's releasing? When?

More than likely in the next year to year and a half. They specifically mentioned they are entering the polish phase in the video they released that these articles are referencing.

They don't give dates anymore because they did like twice in the early 2010s and then changed the scope of the engine completely so they got a ton of shit about it. The game is super late because they went from starfield "loading screen to surface" to a system where there are no loading screens ever and you can go wherever you want.

Just more of the same old soon™, then

They got the same vibe going on as the 7 days to die devs.

this is a grievance i've needed validated for a long time. tysm

Or all of the above

The devs are not incompetent. Management is.

I think devs can also be incompetent

Devs can be "incompetent" but unlike management development generally has code reviews to catch problems, maintain standards and give those "incompetent" developers feedback so the can improve. Also one incompetent developer is just one incompetent developer, there's only so much they can fuck up. Managers tend to have no oversight while essentially having at the very least one team of developers they can incompetently lead to develop shit. The higher the incompetence the more damage they can do. Just look at Twitter, the entire company is being driven straight into ground because the one guy at the very top is a moron

I don't know enough to be able to argue with you about that. You're probably right I guess.

If they ever release the game Chris Roberts' hookers and blow pre-release starship income dries up.

6 more...

People said that this place ”wasn't like Reddit”.

But now I'm being gaslit by angry Star Citizen fans.

How do you explain that, huh?

Will this be Duke Nukem Forever-Space Edition?

Only if they make a full release next year. Otherwise, they'll set a new record for slowest development cycle, assuming they finally release it. You can't forget that Duke Nukem only actually got the medal because they actually released it.

DNF had a 14 year dev cycle and this has already been exceeded by Beyond Good and Evil 2 at 22 years. So no, Star Citizen S42 isn't going to win that award.

A game only gets the title if it releases. There's pretty much no indication that Beyond Good and Evil 2 will ever be released.

I've heard this will be part of a genre Mashup, and it'll come with a copy of Winds of Winter!

I'll take the third book of Kingkiller Chronicles over that please.

Fucking please.

I discovered Rothfuss like a week after NotW released.

I’ll buy it (the premise, not necessarily the game) when I can actually buy the complete product.

So they're going to release the game now, right?

Right?

Anakin/Padmé meme

Maybe if they didn't spend a ton of their budget hiring random big name actors to be in a video game, they could have been done much sooner.

it's such a wild example of feature creep, and yet it's not quite the wildest example of Star Citizen's feature creep. When Roberts' funding exceeded his wildest dreams, he should've changed nothing from his original pitch and simply delivered that. For reference:

Original funding goal: $2 million US

Funding by end of Kickstarter campaign: well over $6 million US

If they finished the project with a $4 million surplus, great! They'd have ample budget for post-launch support, and maybe even for some free post-launch content updates to improve goodwill. If that'd gone as planned, the dude'd be sitting on a whole new generation of goodwill.

Oh, and we'd have a game like this:

Pick up jobs as a smuggler, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, or enlist as a pilot, protecting the borders from outside threats.

A huge universe to explore, trade and adventure in

Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want

Actions of the players impact the universe and become part of its history and lore

Fully dynamic economy driven by player actions

If caught alone in an online ambush, send a distress broadcast to your friends and if they’re nearby they can jump in-system to save your bacon.

You wanted proper Newtonian mechanics. You got it! Spaceships adjust their trajectory and orientation just like the real thing.

10X the detail of current AAA games (as measured in polygons)

Range of scale never seen before in a game - ships from 27m to 1km scale, all at same level of detail

Support for Joystick, Gamepad, Mouse, Keyboard, as well as HOTAS, flight chair, rudder petals, and VR

the cardinal rule regarding “in-game purchases” is: Players who spend money purchasing in-game credits will have no advantage over players who spend time!

Instead they immediately pivoted to a pay-for-ships funding model and let the scope grow to seemingly every one of Roberts' wildest whims

The tech demo is cool. Realization of no-loading-screen transitions from surface -> atmosphere -> orbit -> microgravity -> docking with another ship is wild. Being able to watch your pilot and gunner do a space battle from out the window, while you go walking about the ship is wild. But having it be only a tech demo for this long is so disappointing, and having the focus pivot from singleplayer-with-online to online-with-singleplayer are significant disappointments.

funding timeline: https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/Crowdfunding_campaign

original pitch/campaign: https://web.archive.org/web/20121015042706/http://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/

"Why make less money when you can make more money?"

  • Insurance Companies
    • Me

If it's feature complete, why not release the game lol?

Ok lemmings, just saying, of all the places that had star citizen hate, they all calmed down and actually had positive things to say when this news came out.

Y'all are the only ones still being haters in such large numbers. It's releasing and it's looking to be quite amazing, don't deprive yourself of a good time when it comes out. :P

Laugh at Scam Citizen backers. Mock Scam Citizen backers. Make memes of Scam Citizen backers. Launch the hopes and dreams of Scam Citizen backers into the sun. Dunk the self esteem of Scam Citizen backers into a trash can. Funnel the dignity of Scam Citizen backers into a wood chipper.

Reminder that Starfield was in development for 8 years by an experienced gigantic team with a AAA budget and it still wasn't half as good as indie crowd founded Star Citizen alpha version.

Starfield had less than half the budget of Star Citizen and actually came out.

That depends on your perspective on the engine and dev tools.

Does it really though?

Starfield could have been programmed in potato with ti-84 calculators as dev tools. The work has been done to bring a playable game to the market.

What goes on behind the scenes isn't really important to an end user. They are purchasing an entertainment experience, not an investment into a game engine.

The point I was making was a response to the budget statement. Starfield uses an engine that bethsoft first licensed expensively, modified extensively at expense and then bought the company's assets. The game's singular budget does not show the development cost. That was my point.

If we're discussing game dev budgets we're not talking from an end user perspective.

Are you suggesting that we should raise the cost of Starfield’s development then and account for hidden engine costs?

We can do that. I don’t know what a good number would be, but let’s quadruple or quintuple it for fun. Are we sitting at the $1.5 billion dollar mark? This gives us a scenario where Starfield has now cost twice to develop than this game.

The game was still developed and released. At some point, long development times start to work against a product. This isn’t a field where consumer expectations and tastes remain constant. The longer a game takes to make, the more dated design decisions may appear. Graphics cannot remain cutting edge for the entirety of a 10 year development cycle without rework, which can be seen as a waste of resources. That time and energy could have gone towards something else. Rework enough systems and you begin to paralyze your ability to actually complete the project.

Reminder that starfield is playable and enjoyable, with decent performance and a complete game with a shitload of missions. Can Starfield be better? Yeah, and I think it probably will be with a bit if time. Is the space combat a little bit dogshit with really nice audio design? Yeah, it sure is. Is it actually out, playable, with boarding and ship building? Yep, sure seems like it.

I don't even know why you threw this example out there for a single player game that's pretty much what everyone expected from a AAA studio in the current "optimize every dev hour per dollar" bottom line focused game dev style.

You can play SC now if you want, lots of people to and enjoy it.

The second half I don't dispute, people play it and enjoy it. The first part though I'm not sure about for myself, I don't think I can play SC, certainly not the SC I paid for god knows how long ago. I can play a tech demo right now, and that's just not enough.

I hope I cream my pantaloons when SQ42 actually lands. Until then, SC as a whole is far from what's been promised.

Played SC 2 years ago and it was extremely extremely buggy and a seriously hardware straining experience. I really wanted to enjoy it, because traversing the city by metro and seeing the ship's interior is pretty cool, but like on every 2-3rd mission, a bug killed my run.

Got to love the classic of buying some trade goods and then randomly exploding en route, so you lose all your credits.