MeLKoR posted:

You forgot this one



Hello? Sir? I need to speak to you for a minute about the BDSSE. Are you familiar with Hollywood movie and games producer Chris Rob-- Sir? Hello?

Samizdata posted:

Even I am not that stupid/high.

boviscopophobic posted:

This post was supposed to go in the Theoretical Cetology thread, but it's closed for "archiving", whatever that means. You can check there for the previous forum snapshot/demographic estimate that I refer to below.


JAN 2017 RSI DEMOGRAPHICS UPDATE

About 6 months and $25M have elapsed since the previous demographic snapshot of the RSI forum population. Updated funding-related statistics are summarized below. The methodology is mostly the same as in my previous post, so you can refer to that for details as well as an explanation of the meaning of each graph.

First off, the forum account vs RSI account rate discrepancy has stabilized at about 3.5, meaning that 3.5 RSI accounts are currently being created for every forum account. This ratio obviously spikes during free fly events.




For the funding-related graphs, the basic funding assumptions remain the same as last time, but there are three updates to the methodology. The first relates to closed accounts. Thanks to the wave of refunds post-Streetroller, I learned that is possible to determine with reasonable confidence if an RSI account has been closed, which generally indicates revocation due to refunds or possibly other misbehavior such as hacking. This latest set of summary graphs includes only accounts that were "alive" at the time of the snapshot. The previous set of graphs included a certain number of "dead" accounts, which affected the accuracy of the title counts.

The second change is that I've aggregated all titles not associated with a funding level into an "OTHER" title, except for a small set of user titles that I deemed to be CIG-related. These titles, namely "Staff", "Developer", "Creator", "QA", and "Game Master", are assigned the aggregate title of "CIG". Some other user titles that are arguably CIG-related, but which I did NOT include in the CIG set, are "Bug Moderator" and "Moderator". Note that some developer accounts may mark themselves as such as such only by their account name; these would not be included in the CIG count.

Finally, to counteract title churn from people changing their title, I look at each account's titles over a number of forum snapshots and use the one that implies the highest funding level. Since user titles can be "understated" but not "overstated", so to speak, this should be a reasonable procedure if user funding levels are non-decreasing. Thankfully, since CIG almost never grants partial refunds, an assumption of non-decreasing funding levels should not introduce too much additional error. (Note: if no funding-related titles are available, then CIG-related titles are prioritized over "OTHER" titles.)








The contribution of concierge-level backers (High Admiral and up) has slightly increased -- 56.4% under the mid funding scenario, versus 53.6% last time. If we compare the graph of estimated average user spending by quarter of enlistment with the previous version, we get the following average per-user increases:



This indicates that accounts of all "ages" are continuing to put money into Star Citizen, possibly more so for pre-2014 accounts. However, note that an increase of $10-15 or so is a small fraction of the likely average transaction amount -- recall that this period includes Gamescom, Citizencon, the anniversary livestream, and the holiday sale, which featured pricy concept ships, cash-only sales, capital ship sales, etc. Depending on what you think the average transaction amount is (which I have not attempted to estimate), you could translate this into an estimate of the size of the current paying backer population.

Another longitudinal view of the backer population can be obtained by constructing contingency tables at various time snapshots. For example, the following is a comparison of highest user titles achieved through early August 2016, versus early January 2017. Because of how highest titles are computed, this table contains some unknown fraction of users "leveling up" through spending, and some users simply adjusting previously understated titles upward. I believe that the dominant contribution is leveling up, especially when looking at movement between the higher tiers, but I have not attempted to quantify this.



Note that we have two new pseudo-titles: "DEAD", indicating that the account died off (refunds etc.) between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017, and "UNBORN", indicating that the account was made between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017. So for instance, we can see that of 92 completionists as of Aug 2016, 1 of those accounts got a refund. Of 193 wing commanders as of Aug 2016, 31 were promoted to completionist and 2 got a refund, etc. Notably, 22 CIG accounts "got a refund", which most likely means they left the company.

As a rough measure of the propensity of backer subpopulations to level up, we can construct a matrix of outflow percentages. In this table, the number in a particular row/column indicates the percentage of the population with that row's title that advanced to get the corresponding column's title. So for instance, 16.06% of all Wing Commanders in August became Completionists by January. Similarly, 0.37% of Civilians became Freelancers/Colonels, etc. The hottest cells consist of concierge backers (High Admiral and up) moving up one or two levels, and CIG accounts moving to the exits.



If we are interested in inferring refunds specifically, then we need to look at pairs of snapshots that are closer together in time. Otherwise we can miss salient developments -- for instance, if a Civilian in August became a Wing Commander in November then got a refund in December, it would only show up as a Civilian refund in the above table. Using a set of several snapshots I derived the following counts for account deaths per highest title. I also noticed a large number of newly established Civilian accounts showing up as dead. To exclude possible low-effort banhammered trolls from the refund counts, I only counted Civilian accounts if they were confirmed as being alive for at least 45 days in at least one historical snapshot.

• Completionist: 5
  
• Wing Commander: 4
  
• Space Marshal/Lieutenant Commander: 19
  
• Grand Admiral: 27
  
• High Admiral: 70
  
• Vice Admiral: 47
  
• Rear Admiral: 58
  
• Freelancer/Colonel: 116
  
• Bounty Hunter: 67
  
• Mercenary: 61
  
• Scout: 32
  
• Civilian: 448
  
• CIG: 26
  
• OTHER: 74
  

Since this is a small and very much non-random sample, the likely accuracy of the funding scenario assumptions (already not that good) is probably far worse for refunded accounts. On the one hand, Civilians are assumed to have a low average contribution partly due to the proliferation of free accounts; however, a refunded account would obviously not be a free account. On the other, high-value accounts may not be refunded for anywhere near their nominal value, due to grey market transactions.

If we go ahead and apply the min/mid/max funding assumptions anyway, we get refund totals of $407,420, $674,587.50, and $941,755, respectively. For another estimate, also problematic, we can consider the self-reported refund amounts from /r/starcitizen_refunds. From reading through the posts that stated actual refund amounts, I arrived at an average per-user refund of $1366.10. Applying this to the 1028 non-CIG refundees, we would get a total of $1,404,350.80. These estimates are of course only for the refunded forum population. The multiplier to get the total amount of refunds in the entire RSI population would likely be well less than 2.5, which is the ratio of all RSI accounts to all forum accounts.


CONCLUSIONS

All previous caveats about the accuracy of these estimates still apply. In addition, there are particular problems with trying to estimate refund amounts. Nevertheless, I think we can conclude that the refund outflows, while CIG certainly would find them annoying, are probably small enough in total that they can be easily compensated for with an extra concept sale (if we don't account for increases in engineering debt).

There are indications that funding is leaning even more heavily on concierge-level backers; this might be a good topic for follow-up analyses. Account age does not appear to play a large role in incremental spending.

Previously I speculated about a soft per-user average spending ceiling around $200. This now seems to be more of an artifact of the bounded time window the backer populations have had to spend their money in. As that time window lengthens, fresh spending continues apace and it remains to be seen when there will be a large-scale change in backer purchasing behavior.

Combat Pretzel posted:

Yeah, like that's not going to be exploited by griefers. Didn't these idiots at RSI want to implement permadeath?

MeLKoR posted:

You forgot this one



Hello? Sir? I need to speak to you for a minute about the BDSSE. Are you familiar with Hollywood movie and games producer Chris Rob-- Sir? Hello?

Breetai posted:

As much as I like laughing at an idiot fuckwit's attempt to make an impossible game and the inevitable demise of its toxic community, reading this kinda makes me want to start doling out swirlies on a primal level. Call your mother and let her know what's going on in your life, but don't mention that post.

Chin posted:

They're using procedural content generation so the game will produce content faster than players consume it.

He says the universe will have "billions and billions" of NPCs in the economy, not the meager 10 million (I believe) that Chris has talked about simulating prior.

They started with "a lot of art" that did not have ship docking in mind.

They're "pushing forward" with improved netcode but can't say when there might be an improvement in server capacity. Maybe 3.0, maybe later.

They're still working on nailing down basic functions of the Idris which he mentions is the primary staging point of SQ42. Still figuring out turrets.

They don't want to just figure out mining, they want to figure out resource collection overall, from collecting biological data to picking plants to collecting wood because you're freezing on a planet.

You will be analyzing the coronas of suns (all 100 of them?) to see if there are places you might be able to harvest resources and then sell that information. You might also have another ship that goes into a nebula and "does things".

You will be able to use science to discover new technologies which will keep the entire universe evolving.

They're looking into limiting third person cameras while in combat. So if a gun is fired in your vicinity perhaps you'll be incapable of using third person camera angles to look over cover or around corners. He describes people using third person cameras in this fashion as cheating. Or maybe they'll just have long transitions between camera angles. He says they're making "a first person game" for immersion purposes.

Players have to be able to do anything the NPCs can do. "This is a 100% living world with all of the stuff being interactable by everyone."

You'll have to bring food and water places. If you crash on a planet someone has to come rescue you because you'll start to starve, though you'll have ample opportunity to find stuff to eat or hunt things or steal resources from someone else. The interviewer here recognizes the complexity inherent in the statement and observes, "So it's a totally different game at this point." Trufing replies, "That's Star Citizen." Gameplay loops varying from wandering in the desert to battleship combat.

Outpost simulation will include energy generation which might be a concern on planets with nighttime temperatures of -100 degrees where you'll need heaters. "Might be" planets with acidic atmosphere.

Medical gameplay question is "a tough one to answer because it is still very early." "There is no unifying design right now." He says he doesn't want to give specifics because things might change and that might upset people who were dreaming in a particular direction.

Re: NPCs ejecting from ships, they're working on changing from having separate ship AI and FPS AI to having the FPS AI controlling the guy controlling the ship. There will be cowardice values that might result in premature ejections or a brave AI commando trying to take an enemy down with him. This will play into you choosing your wingmen and crew management. A potential crewman might be an alcoholic and have blackouts during fights.


I wonder if this guy is in on everything and knowingly spouting bullshit or if he's actually delusional enough to think these are reasonable game design goals.

The Titanic posted:

This is a fun post.
If all these things came to be, it would be an amazing game like no other.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

Ma'am this is a Burger King drive thru

Beet Wagon posted:

Looks like we got ourselves a good old fashioned Doxxican Standoff

Breetai posted:

As much as I like laughing at an idiot fuckwit's attempt to make an impossible game and the inevitable demise of its toxic community, reading this kinda makes me want to start doling out swirlies on a primal level. Call your mother and let her know what's going on in your life, but don't mention that post.

The Titanic posted:

That's fine too.

alf_pogs posted:

it would just be a Chore Simulator. it still sounds completely boring

Samizdata posted:

Grab me a Whopper while you're there, please?

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

This is impossible. You cannot strand players on planets without some failsafe (NPC comes to rescue you and take you to the nearest 'capital city' for 50% of your cash). That's such an unbelievably bad idea to even suggest that it makes my head hurt. Even with failsafes in place, to make it not feel like a binary, 'I have a backup plan' vs 'guess I'm waiting until that NPC shows up...' is really difficult. There'd have to be an incentive to go rescue players and if there is an incentive, then there's an economy, and if there is an economy, then down the rabbit hole we go...

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/real_lethality/status/820783891871137792

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/real_lethality/status/820783891871137792

The Titanic posted:

That's also an underlying hilarious concept. That even if SC comes out exactly as pitched it'd be a hideously unfun game.

Like above, you just spent $60 for TBDDSE and you undock and you're blown up and crash on the nearby planet. Now you're stuck on this planet playing poo poo-tier Minecraft for the next 20 hours while managing food and water levels.

Or you finally get enough to buy a ship and it takes 3 real life weeks before enough materials are delivered to build your ship.

Or you get blown up in a glitch, and have to take a space liner back to your home base to get your ship, and that takes hours to do. Even better if along the way another player blows up your liner, and you get helplessly killed while cussing in frustration.

It's like the immersion animations. Sure it's cool two or three times, but after that if it takes longer than 1 second you're mashing the button to skip them.

None of the above sound fun, but that's what Star Citizen is trying to be. In a world where people get pissed if loading a save game takes too long, or getting back into the action takes too many button clicks and screens, or if the last auto save checkpoint was too far back.

Even the dream of Star Citizen is kinda crappy. People overlook it because everybody thinks they'll be Han Solo and never be dumb enough to be killed. They think they're going to play the heroic savior or kind benefactor or impossible to stop pirate, while avoiding these huge pitfalls. There is cognitive dissonance between looking at what CIG is implying and saying "and what will this be like to actually play?" and since nobody seems to stop dreaming about the impossible long enough, thinking the AIs will be anything more than walking on a track and doing canned animations every few steps, everybody seems to overlook that the game just sounds not fun to play. It sounds punishing. Which might be good for a Pay2Win game though. Suffer on a planet for 10 hours or pay $5 for a miraculous rescue taxi!

I hope that before everything crashes and burns, Chris Roberts gets a real vertical slice working. And people play it, and tell him it's not a fun game. I just hope that the twinkle of "I am saving pc games" can be stifled in Chris' over paid eyes before he gets shut down. I don't want him to go out with a "Well we tried real hard but..." kind of thing. I want him to know that his dream was poo poo, and even people who were excited for it tells him it's boring.

That closure may never happen, but it'd be good if it did.

Sillybones posted:

Isn't Elite like that? You run out of fuel or something and your only options are suicide or someone brings you some mana.

Chin posted:

Re: NPCs ejecting from ships, they're working on changing from having separate ship AI and FPS AI to having the FPS AI controlling the guy controlling the ship. There will be cowardice values that might result in premature ejections or a brave AI commando trying to take an enemy down with him. This will play into you choosing your wingmen and crew management. A potential crewman might be an alcoholic and have blackouts during fights.

TheAgent posted:

they do seem to have a lot of backend stuff up and working, mostly tech related

but that doesn't mean poo poo when your animations are hosed, your mocap work needs to be redone, your models are constantly being refactored, the FPS don't work, the AI don't work, everythings just goddamn broke

so its great you can show chris a planet you just made in a week and it looks pretty great but ruh oh

chris just said he wants this huge ship to fly right over you, guns barred about to fire and he wants to see the NPC actually driving the thing

not that the ship will just be its own AI thing and fly around and theres some model in the cockpit

NO

he wants the NPC to fly the ship and know how to fly the ship and where the player is and wants the NPC to be able to fire at the player but if the NPCs ship is damaged he wants the NPC to eject and call in support and then scramble for cover in the debris of the ship to suppress the player until the NPC backup arrives

imagine having to code that poo poo

no_recall posted:

Yes it is, and its a game mechanic cause its mainly your fault for
1) not looking at the star type you're dropping out with
2) didn't bring a fuel scoop
3) being a noob.

Also the parpcorn lately is delicious. Keep it up, thread.

The Titanic posted:

Even the dream of Star Citizen is kinda crappy. People overlook it because everybody thinks they'll be Han Solo and never be dumb enough to be killed. They think they're going to play the heroic savior or kind benefactor or impossible to stop pirate, while avoiding these huge pitfalls.

TheAgent posted:

yeah like

lol

Mirificus posted:

TheAgent posted:

according to my drinking buddy, to hit full release this is the actual internal timetable and not chris's headcanon

sq42
2017 1st episode/preview (10 hours of gameplay/cutscenes)
2018 2nd episode
2019+ complete game

SC
2017/2018 3.0 (with all promised features)
2019 first real pre-alpha release
2020 alpha
2021 beta
2022+ release (final with most features in, not all ships, not all systems, etc)

this is with the current teams and contracted studios

my drinkin friend said they thought the company would need another $175 to $250m in order to continue working until SC is released

TheAgent posted:

I guess this is kinda relevant again since we talkin bout monies