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Considering CIG's track record with delivery and their less than honest approach to marketing, what % of the mentioned features will be cancelled? 80%?
Based on their track record, the first iteration of the tech will be a barebone shell of what will be implemented later on.
- Recoverable consumables during reconstruction probably won't make it to T0.
- Drones for construction: considering their record on drones so far I definitely don't expect construction drones to make it to T0, this might turn into one of those "cancelled" or "severely delayed" features.
- Logging in/out of a base, likely to be implemented since they already have ship bed logging and are currently testing out players logging in/out of personalized hangars.
- Tiered research: Definitely not expecting this for T0.
- Construction incorporating itself into the terrain: they already have most of the tools for this, so it comes down to making it "idiot" proof. I would expect the basic issues/problems we have already seen such as stairs that don't go all the way to the ground. Everything we're building will be a static asset, in other words the stairs aren't going to automatically shorten/lengthen to adjust to the terrain.
- Refineries: We might actually see at least one type of refinery at T0... Whether it's actually functional is another question.
- Extractors - they do already have assets for this, but I don't expect it to actually be extracting anything when it's first implemented.
- Freight Elevators - a fairly essential piece to all of this. I expect it to be horribly broken during Evo, partially working by Wave 1, and maybe fully working only after a patch has been applied sometime after the initial release.
Everything they have delivered so far is barebones and broken. The only thing they excel at is nice looking assets.
The gameplay is particular is crude and done in a very lazy manner.
Yeah, whenever they first deliver new features that's the norm. But they usually go in and fix up the worst things.
This game definitely isn't for everyone. Half the game is learning just how to workaround the bugs so that you can actually play the game.
But once you get past that, it's actually a pretty awesome experience (in my opinion) and it offers an experience that you can't get in other games. It has made it hard for me to go back and play any other space sim.
For what it is, I've definitely gotten my $45 worth.
"T0" is marketing/PR term. Every single deliverable has been massively cut and what was delivered was in a perma-broken state.
It's not about the bug, it's the gameplay. It is just so bad.
I like trading, this was my experience with trading in SC (from another thread):
I tried their free trials 4 times. Twice I encountered game breaking bugs (required a restart and switching servers respectively).
Let’s ignore that for now. I will start with the good things. The planet to space transition was pretty cool, not going to lie. The cities were also detailed and looked nice (the first time you take the train in one of the cities, it does contribute to the world building). That being said, both the planets and the POI have nothing to offer in terms of actual gameplay structure. The cities might as well be a menu based system for purchases/interactions. The planets just have some random uninspired mission locations that all feel the same. You might as well have a separate map that you enter via cutscene.
But the biggest issue was the horrible gameplay. It’s one of the reasons I believe star citizen is a scam.
I will use a small trading indie game called Merchant of the Skies as a comparison point. It was developed by a husband and wife duo in less than 12 months. The game has:
- Dynamic world impacted by trading activities. City taxation/reputation, new resources, new locations, new ships and upgrades all open up as you complete various trading missions.
- Bazaar system. There are several location on a map that have weekly bazaars. Certain days have peak visitors while others are off days. You have to time your arrivals/trading.
- Supply and demand system in bazaar sales. You over/under price your goods depending on how much of your ship’s inventory you want to sell. This is also tied to the weekly visitors intensity system.
- Refueling system. Locations on the edge of the map have refuelling station that are few and far between. There is a simple RNG system for bonus fuel during travels.
- Mail/passenger travel side missions. You can occasionally help travellers and deliver mail. It’s fun to align this with your trading activities.
- Different late-game ships that you can pick depending on your play-style (it’s not only about cargo capacity, it does actually have a relatively big impact on how you go about the game).
This is just the gameplay that is relevant for comparison. There is also in-depth base-building, complex trade fleets and delivery scheduling, a simple RPG system, a simple ship employee system, a simple bank system, a resource gathering system, rudimentary exploration (map is randomized on each run), a mainline story and a bunch of different side missions.
Now compare that to star citizen. No supply/demand. No world impact. No economy. There is nothing to do except get more money to get ships. Sure you play with other players, but is there any kind of competition in terms of trading? They don’t even have a functional escort system where you can hire NPC ships for defence against griefers.
And crude gameplay is not limited to trade. FPS combat with single digit ticks? Exploration with one fully explored system? I will add that they sell non-functional “exploration ships” for hundreds of dollars; some of them are literal JPEGs. There is a bunch of other stuff that they’ve marketed but have simply not implemented or completely abandoned after the initial cash shop sales campaign (data running, journalism spaceships, refuelling spaceships, passenger transport spaceships, medical spaceships, farming spaceships, flying bazaar spaceship, mine laying spaceship, the list just goes on and on).
In context of a multiplayer game, you would want some sort of dynamism and player interaction. Something along the lines of “planet X is building Y, requiring delivery of Z within the next 2 IRL months.”
Successful completion of this mission would result in % discount on trade NPC escorts (which don’t exist in SC) or additional NPC security on major trade routes. Pirate players and NPCs pirates would need to try and stop traders/haulers from successful completing the mission within 2 months. You know, real gameplay for traders and other “classes” with an impact on the game.
The gameplay is what you make of it. No one should be grinding away just trying to earn in-game currency unless you enjoy what you're doing.
You're right, the market gameplay isn't there right now, and what's there doesn't stand out from any other game in any sort of amazing way. So if that's all you're looking for in a game, Star Citizen isn't there yet and it's not the game for you. We're closer to a Sea of Thieves-like market/hauling gameplay and, in my opinion, that's not where the fun is at. Well, not unless you're doing bounty missions and picking out the most expensive cargo to salvage from downed ships, then sending a player ahead to scout out the salvage yard and make sure that it's safe to land and sell your loot.
With the current state of the game, most of the fun gameplay is to be had during events like JumpTown, Xenothreat, Raid on Orison, or the current Save Stanton event.
Last night I had a fun session, this is just one example of a typical night playing the current event mission:
I couldn't use my primary weapons (A super rare bug I haven't seen this bug in years) so I had to relog to fix it. Then I couldn't spawn a ship at the station I had landed at (rare bug by now and avoidable if you know why it happens). So, I ended up hijacking an abandoned player ship on a public landing pad (ships stick around forever once they're abandoned unless they get destroyed/salvaged/etc). I joined up with a group of 9 other random players and we crewed a capital ship so that we could take on one of the event missions where you go up against an NPC capital ship and their fleet (it took 3 tries just to leave because the station didn't want to release the docking port properly, and the ship would despawn if we didn't pull away in time). We arrived at the mission site and some other players in their capital ship were being hostile towards us (ramming us and launching torpedoes at us). Our ship was "soft-deathed" so we abandoned ship by hopping out the airlock and a few of us were able to board the hostile player ship while another of our crew was able to board the NPC capital ship. Our boarding parties were both repelled.
I had already rented a medium size ship and loaded a hoverbike on it earlier, so I pulled that out. The rest of the crew pulled out another capital ship. When we made it back to the mission site the hostile players had gone. So, we proceeded to take on the NPC fleet. Our capital ship tried unloading some torpedoes on the NPC capital ship, but the point defense cannons were too quick to take out any torpedo that had locked on, so they had to make close passes while dumb firing the torpedoes to get in some hits.
A few good hits on the ship later and we had destroyed some of the turrets, some of the point defense cannons, and completely broken off the main thrusters, effectively immobilizing the ship so that it slowly tumbled towards the nearby gas giant (the altimeter popped up on my HUD at least which usually appears once your close enough to start getting affected by gravity).
Another good hit and one of the front hangar doors had cracked open just wide enough for a tiny ship to fit through. I had been buzzing around on my hoverbike, so I took advantage of that opening and guided my way towards that gap as the ship continued to slowly tumble towards the planet. On the way I passed about a dozen bodies of NPCs that had somehow been ejected/clipped out of the capital ship (I think there's normally around 150 NPCs crewing the ship), this isn't a "pre-scripted" thing that happens every time you deal major damage to the ship.
I made it through the hangar doors, landed, and then I fought my way on foot from the hangar all the way up to the bridge where the battle outside was still raging as our capital ship unloaded the last of their torpedoes onto the ship. I could still catch glimpses of this going on outside as I passed various viewports/windows through the ship. I could hear the difference when the ship was hit at a location very close to me vs the other end of the ship. Again, this wasn't some "pre-scripted event", if an explosion went off nearby it's because the ship actually was hit there.
Eventually I found my way up to the bridge where I was able to take out the pilot. I then hopped in the pilot seat, droppped the landing gear and toggled what was left of any VTOL thrusters to completely stop the ship from being pulled any further into the nearby gas giant.
Although the mission completed successfully the moment I took out the pilot, I continued to explore the ship and take out any hostile NPCs on the way. By this time I had a leg injury and if I kept taking hits there my character would start limping along unless I administered a specific drug to push through it. I made my way through the mess hall, through a briefing room, through the crew quarters, the bathrooms, the armory, some prisoner holding area, a medical bay, etc. Some other players boarded the ship to get a look around. It was a fun night.
There isn't any other multiplayer game out there that lets me experience something like this at this scale. Being able to fly around an entire solar system, boarding capital ships without any loading screens or "magical teleportation" to get on-board. I can stand right next to the pilot and start pushing buttons on his dash/screens if I want to mess with him and the ship. I can try to jam whatever ship or vehicle onboard if I want to (even if it means cutting off the wings of a vehicle to force it to fit). I can load a tank on top of a ship or even use the equivalent of a space tow truck to fly it into battle if I really wanted.
The closest thing in this aspect might be Star Wars Battlefront or Sea of Thieves, but even then, in Battlefront you're locked into a specific battlefield and you can't control the capital ships. Even boarding the ships you're limited to a small confined area where the rest of the doors are conveniently locked. Even if you could get past them, there wouldn't be anything there. There is no danger of falling into the atmosphere of a nearby moon/planet during a battle. With Sea of Thieves there aren't any massive capital ships over there, it's not a space game, and you're limited to a small area with a few islands.
Sure, there are lots of games that have similar features to what Star Citizen has, and some of them pull off those individual features way better than what Star Citizen does (especially if we're using a single player game for comparison), but nothing combines everything in the way that Star Citizen does.
And in X3 I can fly into a system and see one of the competing factions send in an invasion force to try and take over the system. The invasion force consists of multiple different classes of ships with a mothership, several battleships, support vessels and fighters. They all engage in a collaborative manner and take a defined offensive position. The defending faction tries to get all of its forces into a defensive fleet with even police patrols joining. As they can't manage the defence, they request backup from the neighbouring system. Eventually forces arrive and after a big battle the invading fleet decides to retreat. This is all happening in a dynamic manner; I am literally just a random ship passing by through the system.
The point I making is that the specific package of features is not that relevant.
What's relevant is that they are marketing insane functionality and selling trading/hauling ships for hundreds or even thousands of dollars (some in JPEG form for over a decade) and yet the trade gameplay is comically crude. And this is after ~13 years and ~$750 million allegedly spent on development.
X3 sounds awesome... But it's a single player game... Along with the other examples you've provided. There's a large difference between developing a single player game, and developing an MMO game.
I got into Star Citizen as a former Eve Online player because I always wanted an MMO like Eve, but with the ability to actually run around inside my ship, land on planets, and board other ships if I wanted to.
The planned market for Star Citizen sounds very similar to what Eve Online already has going, which I'm all for. I don't see any reason to doubt that they're working on it. They have continued to consistently release major updates every year, controversy and all. It's definitely taking longer than any of us would have hoped, but there is progress, and we can play it right now.
The market isn't there yet. Like I said, it's barely more than what you can do in Sea of Thieves right now. But there's way more to the game than just the market.
And yes, they do sell ships at insane prices, but no one needs to buy those to play the game. You can loot/find/rent/buy/borrow/hijack anything in this game that can be bought externally.
If anyone is jumping straight into the game and dropping thousands of dollars upfront, they're either very bad with monetary decisions, or they have enough money that they don't care.
Personally, I followed the game development for about a year before I was satisfied that it wasn't a scam, and only then did I actually buy a starter package. It took me another 3 years before I spent anything else on the game, and that's only because I was satisfied with the progress that they had made in that time.
And $750 million for 13 years of development doesn't sound like a lot to me, especially compared to the operating cost of other MMOs like WoW. Their operating costs were close to $50 million/year about 20 years ago, and I can only imagine that those costs have continued to go up since then:
https://www.wired.com/2008/09/total-operating/
Could someone else have made a better game given the same budget and time? Probably. But no one else is making an MMO that competes with Star Citizen, at least for the features that a lot of us are looking for. So we're stuck with them until someone else comes along.