Gaming

I scoped my PC build in 2013 with a GTX 770 with Star Citizen in mind. Even then SC becoming a reality was a coin flip - I was (and still am) a huge fan of Freelancer so I knew what I was in for on a Chris Roberts project before I backed. Built the PC, popped $25 down on an Aurora, and figured we'd see how it played out.

I'm still using that PC as a daily driver, granted with an upgrade to a GTX 980 and some extra ram in the time since. It's long in the tooth and is probably going to be retired by years' end, but I laugh a little thinking about how that computer had a whole life in the time SC has been in development.

I did run the hangar module when it first came out, so at the very least I did get to see my ship using that machine.

It's subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.

The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It's like how the No Man's Sky devs claimed at one point they'd individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.

At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can't keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.

To have spent that much money and yet not have anything really resembling a game, just a glorified tech demo, is pretty sad.

I was so excited 10 years ago for star citizen. I played eve online and was in a corporation there with my best friends at the time, I couldn't wait until the day we'd all be standing together on the bridge of a ship and actually fly together for a change.

It's just been a downhill disappointment since then, with CR seeming more of a scam artist with every lie he'd make over the years and SC getting further away from that initial dream. I tried it a year or two ago and it's barely functioning, and even less of a game. I thought that by 2020 we'd have at least SQ42 for sure, but not it looks like they can't complete even that.

And the community still eats it up and defends the project vehemently. I've never seen such a fanatical fanbase that can't see what's in front of their eyes. And I'm still not even angry about it... just sad and disappointed.

Almost bought it when they posted the first Squadron 42 trailer in... 2019? The one with all those great actors. I thought it was almost ready at that point, at least the story part.

Then I remembered to never preorder anything, when it comes out, it comes out, and if it's good, then great, I'll get it then.

Same.

I wasn't convinced at the very beginning, but once they had the hangar demo out, with that insanely detailed, intractable spaceship, I was so impressed I spend about a hundred dollars on it to "help development".

At this point I've long since given up hope this mess will be finished in a reasonable timeframe. I'm just glad Starfield is coming up and from the trailers and interviews it's looking like a suitable replacement.

And since it's the creation engine again, any major or minor mistakes will have a mod that fixes them sooner or later.

this is worse than announcement of announcement of teaser trailer

Lumberyard was just a fork of cryengine, that's not what required a rewrite. They threw away all the FPS work that they hired a company to make for them, and redid that from scratch, and then also just rewrite systems all the time because they have no plan.

... right?

Its supporters bounce between “It’s already out!” and “Developing such a huge game takes time.” depending on which stance is more convenient in an argument.

I've been playing Star Citizen pretty regularly for years, and still do. While it's not progressing as quickly as I want it to, it's definitely progressing... and so long as their current funding model keeps the game evolving, I'm happy with that.

The thing that concerns me about Starfield right now is how little they've shown of flight mechanics. I'm starting to get the feeling that space flight is going to be a half-baked afterthought and atmospheric flight might not be a thing at all. We'll know soon enough, but I am still not going to let myself expect anything more than "Fallout/Elder Scrolls in Space". All the on-foot gameplay looks great, but I also want to fly around the universe and planets on my own, discover neat things in space, have satisfying space and atmospheric controls/physics, land anywhere, etc.

Yes and no. There's a sort of playable game there. But Chris Roberts is sort of infamous for his feature creep.

So more and more gets added to the game and then parts of the base code have to be rewritten to support the new additions, and then you get a 13 year development cycle with no actual end in sight. I think that the feature creep is currently under control, but with everything that's been planned, it's still going to be a couple of years before the game releases.

I am assuming that it will eventually release... Which is a large assumption at this point.

But until then, you can play a game that feels a bit like a first person shooter, and has some ship to ship combat, and some missions, and some other stuff, but isn't as fleshed out as any of those things could be if the focus was strictly on that one thing. Basically it's too many things at once to be really good at ony one of them.