Star Citizen - Space Combat Sim MMO

[Stark]

When the marketing is so terrible and the credulous few more eager to score points using buzzwords than actually talk about anything because vaguely sniping is easier, what should people do? Talk themselves into liking a game? Be swept away by people saying LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD GIVE US MONEY?

I mean the core of a kickstarter is giving people a reason to give you money for nothing. Your reasons have to be pretty good, and usually revolve around name recognition and fatnerds being compulsive. The reasons presented are 'omg polygons' and 'persistent multi'. Apparently people don't like multi and nobody cares about polygons (or peripheral marketing). So it just comes down to ADMIRAL FREELANCER WANTS TO MAKE A PEW PEW.

[Feil]

The megapixelygons are a much bigger part of the video than of the article, and the video is composed and narrated by the creator. This leads me to think that they're a considerably more important part of the 'vision' than they are presented as in the article. They are also something that is a definitively bad idea being touted as a feature. Huge poly counts and ludicrous-size textures don't mean great graphics, and they don't represent impressive designs. They mean poor optimization, gargantuan file sizes, and processing bottlenecks, with no discernible improvement in visual fidelity over existing titles. Remember RAGE?

I kind of like the title. It makes it clear what the game is about, rather than random nonsense like "X" or "EVE." Whatever you think about Wing Commander, you can't disagree that it was a game about being a Wing Commander

Oh, and White Haven, Stark doesn't actually feel cynicism about video games. He just sees a video game and starts typing STRAK STRAK STRAK STRAK STRAK. Your mind interprets that as criticism of the game based on your own subconscious fears, but it's all an illusion.

[Stark]

That's why it should be Wing Commander Freelancer and his Star Patrol. Get missions from WNG CMD Freelancer himself! It's an interesting choice because star- is generic, but citizen is a pretty complex idea to use in a video game. Luckily, it's just a space shooter with a plot inspired by the fall of Rome? :V

About the only interesting feature I saw on the site was per-component damage affecting performance, but I'm not sure if this will turn out to be a good thing gameplay-wise or Chromehounds.

[Feil]

There's enough in there to make me hopeful for Freelancer 2: Rise of the 360 Controller. Or perhaps, from the other direction: EVE 2: Now With Gameplay. Both of which would be very attractive.

[Stark]

There's a lot of horseshit too.

Range of scale never seen before in a game From a vast 1km long carrier to a 27m fighter, to your 1.8M tall pilot, everything is rendered and to the same level of detail.

Actually seen before? If they're saying no LODding, I say 'wow you're retarded'.

[weemadando]

I thought they were saying they had 3 LOD levels that it switched between - man scale, fighter scale and cap ship scale.

Otherwise it's even more bonkers than I thought.

[Stark]

Its sad because obviously the level of detail will be waaaaaay higher than in older games that handled much larger scale differences (and we all remember how absolutely retarded the 12km ship looked in FS2), but they went out and said 1.8m to 1000m = NEVER DONE BEFORZ. Even in X-wing they were all at 'the same level of detail', that level of detail was just poops.

I sure enjoyed floating around docking bays in X.

[Tolya]

What amuses me to no end is that the crowdfunding projects demovids are sooo impressive, with hundreds of thousands of big keywords and phrases thrown around - persistent, never seen before, complex, immersion, etc.

But when you scrape off the bullshit, it's just a bunch of recycled concepts wrapped in a video done by an overzealous 3d studio max fan. If you spend half of the promo time discussing high polygon count of a pilot's ass, then you really have a problem. e

Chris Roberts also boasts the "consoles off limits" thing, but that is just showing how big of a retard he is. This is the same kind of PC vs. Amiga bullshit which got us absolutely nowhere, but nerds had to make themselves feel better by subscribing to a 'better' group. It's not only childish, but also freaking stupid, because there are lots of console people who would gladly give him money to make a space shooter game. But no, he apparently believes PC's are soo better because he used to play them when he was a kid?

Dissecting the actual features of the game, Chris Roberts boasts space exploration. He fails to mention that actual space exploration is BORING, TEDIOUS and TIME CONSUMING. Of course nerds remember all those fun Star Trek episodes so they immediately think "OMG COUNT ME IN!!!". What will probably happen in reality is that you stare at empty space while flying, get a message about a new wormhole, fly to it while watching empty space, jump through it into more empty space where there are a few spherical meshes you can do absolutely nothing with, press a to explore, watch the empty space while the progress bar fills in, presto. Oh, you can name the system - probably the worst idea ever since we will end up with "Yo momma's ass IV class planet" which will kill the immersion immensely. Or will we have a censorship office which will pick only cool names?

I also find it difficult to believe that people still find the concept of arcade space dogfight interesting. X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Freespace games, I-Wars were interesting because shit happpened in them that was amusing to watch and go with. You had a story, a motive, something to drive you forward. In MMO's you usually meet someone who shoots you because he is an asshole or he wants to see abstract charsheet numbers to go up.

Star Citizen may turn out "fun" for EVE people, but that is most probably because an excel spreadsheet lacks graphical polish. My friend is a huge EVE fan, still plays it, but even he admits that the game itself is a spreadsheet with cool graphics.

I've watched the video but I have failed to see ONE remotely interesting element. It's just another X/EVE mix. But I have no doubt people will pay money for it.

[weemadando]

And MMO is what makes space exploration super dumb - can't have time compression or any other "don't waste my fucking time" mechanics.

[CaptHawkeye]

The entire PC vs. console war was born out of insecurity and absolutely nothing else. It's a completely fabricated dilemma because PC gaming is arguably bigger and better than it has been at any other point in it's history. But people see AAA game sale figures and want that kind of success (or acceptance, depending on how deep your issues are) to apply to them. So rather than study the circumstances, they make excuses. "Oh it's just that lot's of stupid people play consoles now and our game is too good for them."

Double stupid for ignoring the AAA-level success of titles like Day-Z, or Portal. Regardless of whether or not one likes those games they totally blow the bullshit out of the water.

Time Compression is just a fancy way of saying "let the game play itself."

[weemadando]

Time Compression is just a fancy way of saying "let the game play itself."

Nope.

[Tolya]

Time Compression is just a fancy way of saying "let the game play itself."

Umm, no, it's just a fancy way of saying "I want to skip to the part where I play the game, not stare at empty space where there's nothing happening".

[Vendetta]

Time Compression is just a fancy way of saying "let the game play itself."

Nope.

No, it's "fast forward to the interesting bit pls."

[Stark]

And MMO is what makes space exploration super dumb - can't have time compression or any other "don't waste my fucking time" mechanics.

The exploration sounds like EVE exploration: use thing to find squiggle, go to squiggle, save navpoint. Works fine there, but the standard if boredom is pretty high in EVE already.

[Feil]

There's no particular reason why exploration has to be boring. In real life, most of everything is boring most of the time, including everything we play games about. You build interesting gameplay around the parts that require some form of problem solving and work out a way to do some combination of skipping the boring parts and populating the world with enough problems to give the player something to solve, and enough sights to give them new stuff to see.

For example - you have a game built around controlling a vehicle, so make your problems solvable by controlling a vehicle. Don't right-click and select "prospect asteroid field," then wait 45 seconds for a progress bar to fill up and collect your Space Dollars. Right click and select "prospect asteroid field," then have the game generate a series of waypoints through the asteroid field and a 45 second count-down. Reward 50% bonus Space Dollars for completion within 30 seconds, and only half the Space Dollars if it takes you more than 45 seconds to complete. The EVE model is hardly the only one available.

I'm not saying this game's exploration content will be fun (if it ever gets made, and doesn't get pared down into Wing Commander 2014), but saying that exploration in games has to be boring is pretty stupid. The entire sandbox genre is based on the fact that it's anything but.

[Tolya]

I'm not saying this game's exploration content will be fun (if it ever gets made, and doesn't get pared down into Wing Commander 2014), but saying that exploration in games has to be boring is pretty stupid. The entire sandbox genre is based on the fact that it's anything but.

Sure, you can even wrap an exploration game around a mario type platformer collecting stars in a newly discovered star system. But that's just silly and kills immersion, same as "go through hoops to map system". Cartography is a tedious process, just like accounting. You wouldn't consider a platforming minigame a good idea for managing accounts in Capitalism type of game.

Real exploration isn't boring, since you can never be sure what happens to you or what will you encounter. But in scripted space games you know at all times what you will encounter. Even an occasional enemy isn't a big surprise in a space shooter. And since they want to make exploration a bulk affair for many players, most likely these will be just your run of the mill "go witness empty space and press a to explore".

[Stark]

They could make it a procedural thing that let players follow clues or whatever. It wouldn't even have to be seeded; since it sounds like its just finding jump points, you could do any kind of follow-the-dots thing to find them. I'm not sure how long he expects this to last though, since players should quickly find everything in the original systems and need to spread out.

[Alkaloid]

I can think of ways to make it work, but they would require an unusually complex economy and pretty active regulation of it by the developers to make it work so massive clans couldn't form and break the economy. Which is a problem because the people that want to form huge clans and try to break the economy are a pretty sizeable chunk of your potential player base.

since players should quickly find everything in the original systems and need to spread out

Easiest fix to that is generating small jump points at random locations from safe to enemy or unexplored that don't last long and are only big enough for a few fighters and maybe 1 capital ship to use. That way small fast ships loaded with sensors become handy because its profitable to scout for them and sell the locations, you can have resource rushes as systems only accessable for a few hours appear and small wars are fought over them by random groups of players, and small groups of fighters can raid enemy supply depots and ambush supply convoys. Of course to make that worth while you need a war depending on supplies, which means player factions and which means the supplies not getting places means something, which means players need to take part in getting supplies to the front, which means trading and convoy escort duties, which means potential for guilds to make game breaking profits with expensive or exotic items, which means you need a hard limit on the amount of those items being produced/existing, which means an actual economy that has to be regulated, which means some sort of in game bank, which eventually leads to EVE. No one really wants another EVE except the people that play EVE, who will just keep playing EVE. That means you need to make a MMORPG that appeals to people that want a MMORPG but don't want to be in a guild and I don't think that will fly. Plus you'd have to come up with a way to stop everyone flocking to one faction a la the horde or sith, and I haven't seen a dev work out how to do that yet.

[White Haven]

Also, the person mapping the jump point has to fly it for the first time to map the route through it. It's described as being quite a difficult and dangerous flight, which is why it can be so lucrative to sell the safe path through this new jump point.

[Stark]

Dangerous why? Combat will be difficult to pitch right and "chance to die" rolls are pretty lame.

[Feil]

Obstacle course time trial? Environmental hazards in an obstacle course or maze (space whirlpools)? For someone who thinks everything is so terrible all the time, you have a surprisingly low number of ideas for how things could be any better.

[Stark]

Why should I do their work for them? White Haven has obviously read something about it and I want to know what he read, not just make shit up. If Chris Roberts doesn't know how to do it properly, good ideas are actually irrelevant.

Space whirlpools are not good ideas, for reference. :v

[Tolya]

Since exploration is more about fighting with time and limited resources (finding something before you run out of fuel/air/crew) rather than an actual opponent, it would be damn difficult to make exploration interesting in a space shooter. If, on the other hand, you had to assemble a crew, find a ship, find funding, equipment - and then manage everything with increasing difficulty because the farther you go, the more problems you have with repairs/morale, then maybe it could be interesting. Christopher Columbus style.

Exploration is a management thing. In Space Citizen you just slam the throttle and pick a wormhole.

[White Haven]

Ah sorry, forgot I had a dangling question here. It's been described as somewhat analogous to shooting a really nasty set of rapids. Essentially you're moving very quickly down an irregular path of some kind, trying to survive to get to the other side. If you succeed, you can take the nav record of the path you followed and make bank on it, because other ships can just plug that into their navigation systems and traverse the jump point safely.

Depending on how nasty new jump points in general or particular points in a specific sense (if there's wide variation...) are, there may even end up being a sub-economy in hiring pilots to run a new wormhole you've discovered, but don't have the skill (or equipment, don't know if that bears on it at all yet) to survive mapping it. That, of course, is speculation on my part.

[Stark]

Man, it sounds like exploration is like TIE fighter training missions, Fly down a scary tube, etc.