Star Citizen: Fear, Uncertainty, and Debt

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Citizen: Fear, Uncertainty, and Debt

Valatar: Sep 26, 2011; A remarkable example of a pathetic species.; Lipstick Apathy

The lawsuit threat begins! And with a really spiteful sort of aside that 'Based on the generous standards set by you, we believe that 24 hours should be sufficient to hear from you.'

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:25

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 20:39

TehRedWheelbarrow: Mar 16, 2011; Fan of Britches

oh lordy..

https://popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:25

Chocobo: Oct 15, 2012; Here comes a new challenger!; Oven Wrangler

Chocobo fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Oct 5, 2015

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:31

Beluga Snail: Jul 26, 2013

Poor Guy Doesn't Understand How Reddit Works posted:

What happened that 7 employees are so disgruntled they are trying to destroy this game, this company, and their careers in the process?
I keep seeing the defense that the Escapist article doesn't matter because those 7 sources were just "disgruntled ex employees conspiring against the company" - even Christ Roberts himself said this
Uhh, that's horrible! Something has to have seriously gone wrong for 7 - SEVEN - employees to be so mad at this game/company that they will literally conspire to try and destroy it. This DESTROYS their careers in the process if the things they said aren't true
I don't really understand how this makes it so we shouldn't worry about what those people had to say.. I'm worried more! The only thing I can think of that would annoy people so much to do this, is if their allegations about the working conditions were true. I know I am just going to get downvoted and messaged telling me to kill myself, but if at least one of you could maybe not deflect and actually address some of these points directly for me, that'd be great. I have autism and sometimes have trouble understanding things, especially when people lie about them (which I am sorry, but SC fans simply are - whether or not these allegations are true. There have been a LOT of lies.)
I back this game and really want a good space game, but I think serious concerns have been raised and I think the responses to them have been unprofessional and disturbing at best.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3nhm9s/drama_megathread/cvpfgqz

It's amazing that even things that look sincere get treated like they're troll accounts.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:33

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

3 posted:

it exists

Actually, the thing about Elite is that it used a completely inverted development model; whereas SC was devloped bottom-up and therefore got lost in its own feature creep and miraculous vision, E:D was developed top-down and delivered a complete but kind of dull space sim and then consistently iterated on it with new content (for example, patch 1.4 which hits tomorrow adds a light fighter arena mode called CQC. This would be essentially the equivalent of Arena Commander except in this case delivered as an addon to a game that already exists rather than a barely working tech demo in lieu of an actual finished product)

That's pretty much how every successful franchise gets delivered, Civilization and the Witcher 3 are good examples of this.

Witcher 1 was a bad game with good ideas, Witcher 2 was a pretty good game because the devs learned from the first one, and Witcher 3 is an upscaled version of Witcher 2.

Civilization IV and V were both ok games when they first came out, but some of the best games ever made after 2-3 dlc/expansions.

The lesson here seems to be deliver a core product first and worry about satisfying whatever niche the fanbase wants later.

Typo fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Oct 5, 2015

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:35

Nellistos: Mar 2, 2013

Is blues news still a thing? wow
6/8 hrs today was catchup, phew!
Thank you all. Thank you.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:36

Spudalicious: Dec 24, 2003; I <3 Alton Brown.

I went to reddit to see what folks over there were thinking of all the lawsuits being threatened...

Rear Admiral Kin-Luu of reddit fame posted:

At this point, I am even fine with the PUs release beeing delayed unti 2018 or 2020 - as long as it will be good.

yep, same poo poo different day

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:37

Justin Tyme: Feb 22, 2011

Chocobo posted:

Did reddit figure out that the nine "sources" are goons yet, and that the whole thing was orchestrated in the open in an SA thread?

edit that out fucker

fucccccck now everyone is gonna know

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:38

TehRedWheelbarrow: Mar 16, 2011; Fan of Britches

Chocobo posted:

Did reddit figure out that the nine "sources" are goons yet, and that the whole thing was orchestrated in the open in an SA thread?

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:39

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Shala posted:

I usually read our manual while on the shitter.

Just to make sure I'm up to speed on super elite tactics with other goons when SC totally comes out.

http://imgur.com/a/Qoaxm

Oh man, its tragic the amount of goon effort behind this nonexistant game. That space hammer and sickle is some tight poo poo and its actually pretty goddamn funny and appropriately pisstakey for a jpeg game.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:40

Oscar Wilde Bunch: Jun 12, 2012; Grimey Drawer

Justin Tyme posted:

edit that out fucker

fucccccck now everyone is gonna know

Someone should go over there and serious post that and see if they fall for it.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:42

Chocobo: Oct 15, 2012; Here comes a new challenger!; Oven Wrangler

poo poo, I didn't know that forum was still paywalled.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:43

Nellistos: Mar 2, 2013

ouya, xbone, shitizen best ten ever spent

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:43

RuckusRouser: Sep 28, 2015; Theres a lot of close ups of landing gear

Typo posted:

Witcher 1 was a bad game with good ideas, Witcher 2 was a pretty good game because the devs learned from the first one, and Witcher 3 is an upscaled version of Witcher 2.

Maybe that's the solution to everything, we just wait for Star Citizen 3

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:43

big_brother: Sep 27, 2015

Justin Tyme posted:

edit that out fucker

fucccccck now everyone is gonna know

Wait are you saying people didn't already know? I thought it was a given

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:45

3: Aug 26, 2006; The Magic Number; College Slice

nopantsjack posted:

Oh man, its tragic the amount of goon effort behind this nonexistant game. That space hammer and sickle is some tight poo poo and its actually pretty goddamn funny and appropriately pisstakey for a jpeg game.

Oh you have no loving clue. Back in 2013 when there was even less of a game than there is now, a group of SC "players" got their guilds together to create PACT (Powers Against Common Threats, essentially space NATO) to combat pirates or more specifically goons. I created TCAP (Trade Coalition for the Allied Proletariat) as a completely fake org just to needle the PACT guys and they promptly imploded in a vortex of paranoia and fear that the evil spacecommies and spacegoons were going to give them wedgies and shove them into lockers. You can thank GotLag for the logo by the way.

EDIT: and the handbook was basically my take on the AAA-grade spergmanuals groups like SUN were putting out at the time. They no joke put a section in their manual about semaphore:

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:46

HamHawkes: Jan 25, 2014

Derek Smart opinion on an unfinished product.

Interview

Right about the 5:40 mark. Pure genius.

It's almost prophetic. Taking money from a million people is just too dangerous.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:47

Jst0rm: Sep 16, 2012; Grimey Drawer

3 posted:

Oh you have no loving clue. Back in 2013 when there was even less of a game than there is now, a group of SC "players" got their guilds together to create PACT (Powers Against Common Threats, essentially space NATO) to combat pirates or more specifically goons. I created TCAP (Trade Coalition for the Allied Proletariat) as a completely fake org just to needle the PACT guys and they promptly imploded in a vortex of paranoia and fear that the evil spacecommies and spacegoons were going to give them wedgies and shove them into lockers. You can thank GotLag for the logo by the way.

thats great.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:48

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

3 posted:

Oh you have no loving clue. Back in 2013 when there was even less of a game than there is now, a group of SC "players" got their guilds together to create PACT (Powers Against Common Threats, essentially space NATO) to combat pirates or more specifically goons. I created TCAP (Trade Coalition for the Allied Proletariat) as a completely fake org just to needle the PACT guys and they promptly imploded in a vortex of paranoia and fear that the evil spacecommies and spacegoons were going to give them wedgies and shove them into lockers. You can thank GotLag for the logo by the way.

EDIT: and the handbook was basically my take on the AAA-grade spergmanuals groups like SUN were putting out at the time. They no joke put a section in their manual about semaphore:

Yeah I skimmed over the SUN handbook and my eyes crossed at the huge diagrams. Then the goon one made me laugh out loud with its diagram with "biff goes back in time" as one of the boxes.

In breaking news: Can the Escapists story hold up to... THE JIMQUISITION?

http://ask.fm/Jimquisition/answer/131773111778

Apologies if already posted.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:50

nerdz: Oct 12, 2004; Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.; Grimey Drawer

FelixReynolds posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3nhm9s/drama_megathread/cvpfgqz

It's amazing that even things that look sincere get treated like they're troll accounts.

I love how in one of the replies the dude mentions other cases of disgruntled employees complaining and cites Konami as an example. The company that fired their biggest cash cow developer, decided to focus on mobile games and pachinko.

Also THQ, the Studio That Went Bankrupt And Closed Down.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:51

sorla78: Oct 11, 2012; EAT THE PAIN AWAY!

Some further technical info:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5695709/#Comment_5695709

quote:

Q1: You use the GIM to manage the VMs that make up the clusters that are instance management. The GIM will make internal calls to spool up these VMs based on the need, assign them to interface with what objects are needed, and is responsible for the handoffs. How will the GIM know what resources are needed (such as a VM's needed CPU/memory/space) and how will the new VM interface with storage? How will this storage be arranged so that these dynamic VMs constantly attaching and detaching from the SAN cluster stay in sync and manage the correct data?

A: GIM does not directly manage the VM�s � we have custom built scheduling and provisioning layers that do this, GIM requests Dedicated Game Server processes (DGS) from the provisioning layer. The scheduler gathers metrics on things like CPU/MEM, historical player counts and other metrics, this will interact with GIM so that it can provide what is needed when it is needed or scale back when demand is lower.

Q2: How will CIG be able to project the amount of physical devices needed to support the ESX hosts, and manage to support the subscription rate needed to keep them on standby? Is this projected to be a significant expense?

A: We are fully cloud backed currently in GCE and so we have no physical devices in our production environment. Should we move or need to leverage our own server architecture then this would be a larger concern.

Q3: Will Google be responsible for the boundary level networking as well as managing the external connections? Will the GIM and all communication between it be trusted and internal from inside the network? For example, will the calls from the GIM be made to the NX devices internally, or will the GIM be hosted and housed by CIG to have more control? If the latter, what measures will be taken to ensure account security? I'm leaning to think everything is inside the CDN however it also makes me wonder how much of the front end will be tied into the GIM and the SAN to support account bound objects.

A: Google handles all the networking both internal and external, we manage our own firewall rules and routes in between internal subnets but everything is highly obfuscated away from us by Google�s systems, we have discussed needing some more in depth control for specific things, but these proprietary things that I cannot discuss. The GIM itself is self-contained on the internal network and does not communicate directly with the player at the network layer. As all of our infra is cloud based so there is no �in-house� or an internal SAN.

Q4: As the VMs are spun up, eventually resources on a physical device will be exhausted to where others will be needed. Since this isn't using containers but raw VMs, how does CIG plan to either have the resources contained neatly within the physical cluster, or does CIG have a plan to span both? The reason I ask is because by what I know VMs cannot span physical devices, and all HA services need to be done on the same physical host. However I am not familiar with anything past 5x.

A: We are containerizing services and moving toward a fully containerized setup � again we do not have any physical device restrictions as we are fully cloud based. Data and hopefully memory state will likewise be on shared cloud based storage.

Q5: If the GIM realizes a physical host is being saturated and more VMs are needed to provide instances, how will the GM handle them if they are next to another? For example, you're in a battle in instance A, and more people arrive and board another ship. The GIM predicts the instance will be beyond optimal performance on a single VM and begins to spool another. However, the physical device cannot allow another and so the GIM moves on to the next provisioned VM on another hypervisor, on another physical cluster. So it creates instance B as the "internal ship" instance. Will the GIM handle the handoff of game objects (all calls in the instance as well as the physical players) and be able to transfer them seamlessly? Will this be salable as technology improves?

A: So while the physical device analogy is not correct, we do still have to do this from a VM perspective. GIM is a �gameplay� component which does request to spin up DGS processes to handle what is going on in the game � it does not request a VM however, it just requests the number of processes it needs to serve the current game situation, it requests these from our custom provisioner � which in conjunction with our custom scheduler determines the best place to put that process � whether it be on the same VM or a different one. GIM will be involved in the streaming of objects from one server process to the other as needed.

Q6: On the networking aspect of this, will CIG be placing all the switching, routing, and updates to Google? Who will manage things such as DDoS protection, IPS/IDS services, ACLs, etc to manage a changing global userbase? Will the cloud services have a set minimum commit/burst rate for the OC-XXX provisioning, and is it even possible to adjust for an unknown level of use past subscribed committals?

A: As the IP space is owned and managed by Google they handle all the BGP routing for their nets, as well as any DDoS that is needed. IPS/IDS is twofold, there is some of this covered by Google and some of this is covered by us. ACL and Firewall rules are all handled by us. We do not have subscribed bandwidth committals for GCE, we pay for what we use. As far as global userbase there will be some GSLB done for the entry points into the network.

Some of the interesting things I noticed - does the answer to Q1 essentially say that part of what the GIMp is doing is determining, based on our own hardware, what instance is best for us? If so, that is pretty impressive.

Also, this seems to put to bed the "is it on the cloud" discussion once and for all. Initially, around when 1.2.0 came out, several devs said the servers for the game was still physical at Austin, just that the GIMp and other transitional aspects were being hosted on GCE. Others said that everything was on GCE. I have personally sided with the former in discussions as I saw no definitive statements otherwise - until now (Q2: "We are fully cloud backed currently in GCE and so we have no physical devices in our production environment.")

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:52

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

God I miss the early days, when pubbies would freak out by us simply showing up. I still remember the first thing we posted.

It was in a "post your fleet" thread where pubbies would make images like the one above showing how many of each their org had. Mind you this was even before the DFM came out, and people were just sperging over the possibilities. That post was how we announced the Goons were coming.

Man, what could have been.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:54

Dusty Lens: Jul 1, 2015; All Glory unto the Stimpire. Give up your arms and legs and embrace the beautiful agony of electricity that doubles in pain every second.

It was pretty fun were people were unironically enthusiastic about the game.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:55

Jst0rm: Sep 16, 2012; Grimey Drawer

sorla78 posted:

Some further technical info:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5695709/#Comment_5695709

wtf is this? Who cares about this nerd poo poo.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:55

sorla78: Oct 11, 2012; EAT THE PAIN AWAY!

Jst0rm posted:

wtf is this? Who cares about this nerd poo poo.

I do, move along citizen.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:55

TehRedWheelbarrow: Mar 16, 2011; Fan of Britches

Jst0rm posted:

wtf is this? Who cares about this nerd poo poo.

me too yo.

I like internetworkin and poo poo.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:56

Jst0rm: Sep 16, 2012; Grimey Drawer

sorla78 posted:

I do, move along citizen.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:56

CrazyLoon: Aug 10, 2015; "..."

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

God I miss the early days, when pubbies would freak out by us simply showing up. I still remember the first thing we posted.

It was in a "post your fleet" thread where pubbies would make images like the one above showing how many of each their org had. Mind you this was even before the DFM came out, and people were just sperging over the possibilities. That post was how we announced the Goons were coming.

Man, what could have been.

I wish I could get all "I was there!" EVE nostalgia-eyed about it, and talk about how I saw it from the outside.

But all I can think of now, that it's certain that the PU is never loving happening in any meaningful way, is "Why was I there?"

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:57

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Chocobo posted:

Did reddit figure out that the nine "sources" are goons yet, and that the whole thing was orchestrated in the open in an SA thread?

Justin Tyme posted:

edit that out fucker

fucccccck now everyone is gonna know

Was that supposed to be a secret? I already told my buddies at MS to get ready.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:57

Ragequit: Jun 1, 2006; Lipstick Apathy

A Neurotic Jew posted:

he doesn't say it was dumb for people to have backed star citizen. He backed it himself. He's critiquing CIG for not giving the backers what they had paid for. At least critique the man for the poo poo he's actually done.

For the most part, yes. But he has been all over Wolf/Wulf for his large amount backed among other things. Funding some $100K (or whatever it was he offered) investigation is a bit more than that.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:58

Jst0rm: Sep 16, 2012; Grimey Drawer

CrazyLoon posted:

I wish I could get all "I was there!" EVE nostalgia-eyed about it, and talk about how I saw it from the outside.

But all I can think of now, that it's certain that the PU is never loving happening in any meaningful way, is "Why was I there?"

lol like they thought somehow cryengine would allow 1000 people at a time because dreams and magic.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 23:59

Ragingsheep: Nov 7, 2009

SneakyFrog posted:

oh lordy..

https://popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/

Pro-click.

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:00

CrazyLoon: Aug 10, 2015; "..."

Jst0rm posted:

lol like they thought somehow cryengine would allow 1000 people at a time because dreams and magic.

Hell, I and a lot of others would've just been happy with them getting to 100 in a decade or so. Sadly, you need competent people to get that done and given that they can't get 10 people in a single instance atm, yeah...

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:00

PITT: Sep 21, 2004; MISTER

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

God I miss the early days, when pubbies would freak out by us simply showing up. I still remember the first thing we posted.

It was in a "post your fleet" thread where pubbies would make images like the one above showing how many of each their org had. Mind you this was even before the DFM came out, and people were just sperging over the possibilities. That post was how we announced the Goons were coming.

Man, what could have been.

I'm still going to hold onto a tenuous tether of hope that something will come out.

Like holding my hand around a flickering tiny flame on a match that's half burnt down while in a blizzard. :smithfrog:

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:01

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Yeah, I've always enjoyed goons' sucesses and reputation in EVE (but never joined in myself because... EVE) and just the general attitude to winding up people who take video game society Very Seriously.

http://imgur.com/a/XSb83 is a pro link btw 3
I'm like 1/5th of the way through and after about a page of people laughing it off Very Serious People start quoting Sun Tzu at people and advising everyone to be forever vigilant from now on plus one huge spergpost about the insidious corrupting ideology of goonism.

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:01

The Taint Reaper: Sep 4, 2012; by Shine

Apparently if you're against star citizens by thinking it will never come out, you're pro gamersgate.

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:01

A Fancy 400 lbs: Jul 24, 2008

Ragingsheep posted:

Pro-click.

i like the unironic putin fellatio in the comments

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:02

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

RuckusRouser posted:

Maybe that's the solution to everything, we just wait for Star Citizen 3

If chris roberts didn't get so much free money and just made wing commander 2015 released it and then kept adding stuff onto it I think it actually had the potential to be an eve online level game like 5 years later because there's something grounding him to reality, and you can't lie quite as easily about something which exists as you can about something which only exists int he abstract.

but at this point yeah it's a matter of how much more money he can steal before this blows over

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:05

MellowTigger: Oct 5, 2015

shrach posted:

Let's talk about UK legislation. Specifically the Companies Act 2006. It is now the 1st of October 2015 in the UK and that means that Roberts Space Industries International Ltd is now in breach of UK law by failing to file its accounts with Companies House. It joins its parent company, Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd in this regard (missed their deadline 18 days ago). Foundry 42 Ltd failed to file their accounts a little over three months ago and as such have reached stage 3 of the 4 stage financial penalty. The final stage is after six months.

I'm lost. What source? How do you know they are late in their filings? Is there a webpage of publicly posted information?

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:05

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 20:39

Octopode: Sep 2, 2009; No. I work here. I manage operations for this and integration for this, while making sure that their stuff keeps working in here.

sorla78 posted:

Some further technical info:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5695709/#Comment_5695709

These questions look eerily similar to the same ones that were brought up here about the same supposed issues about their server architecture, and appear to have received essentially the same response.

# ? Oct 6, 2015 00:07

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