fuctifino posted:

Scruffpuff posted:

The primary issue holding Star Citizen back, in my mind, is not related to technology per se.

You can write a 900-page blog about how it's impossible or extraordinarily difficult. (Note to self: somebody might have already written one, I have to look into that.)

We can watch their horrific development practices and constant missteps all day and show that each one, by itself, stops Star Citizen from coming out, much less considering all the mistakes in aggregate.

But none of that matters. The primary issue that keeps Star Citizen from releasing is that their monetization scheme runs in 100% opposition to releasing a game, or even fixing what they have.

Many things need to be gutted to the core and either reworked or rebuilt from the ground up, but that can't happen because it must be 3.0, then 3.1, etc. The backers must continue to see numbers go up, and iterations of the current build continuing apace, or the funding is threatened.

The entire flight model needs reworking, before the finalized pretty models are put in, but that can't happen, because the finished models are what they're selling - not the game.

They're selling finalized game assets and the illusion of progress, and that decision doomed the game. Any course correction at this point threatens to sink the incoming funds, and then it's truly over.

That is the true E.L.E. - the point of no return they reached at some point in the last couple years when they had the chance to go back and do it right, and chose instead to forge ahead with a broken system. Now that the funding and the development efforts are fully opposed, it's only a matter of time before they collide.

VictorianQueerLit posted:

I'm not defending Derek, I'm the first one to make fun of him, but I've talked about this in the past and I think what he said was accurate at the time.

Now I will channel Derek

This is all rambling speculation though about what went on behind the scenes. I've formed my opinion by passively watching this shitshow for a few years now and am taking into account things like CIGs own marketing, their tweets, their ATVs and interviews. Also things like the leaks and this threads analysis at every decision and action they take.

My theory is this:

Due to CIG constantly promising things and being unable to deliver I think Chris Roberts around December 2015 was certain of a early to mid two year late 2016 release for Squadron 42 which is where the real money is at. Since he has talked in interviews about expecting ridiculously impossible numbers of sales for it to the tune of a quarter billion dollars it's reasonable to make that the focus of your company if you are a big enough lunatic to think it's going to be that profitable.

Leading up to that was a nonstop barrage of videos about motion capture for Squadron 42 and the actors. Slides about the amazing script. Leaks about all the work going into it and how much work there was actually to do on Squadron 42. All Chris ever wanted to talk about was Squadron 42. Answer the call.

So in early 2016 we did get a few new patches to the PU. These patches started getting less and less substantial from 2.1. Eventually they were slight modifications anyone that has ever modded a game would instantly recognize. Adjusting values of things.

Then the maintenance mode thing comes up here in March. Not necessarily whatever the official terminology for a "maintenance mode" on a piece of software would be but that the PU was only being worked on to keep up appearances. All focus and resources were going to Squadron 42 but the PU is what cultists have paid for.

As 2016 started progressing you started having longer and longer time for even more and more insignificant patches. After about 6-7 months the maintenance mode and reduced consideration for the PU was proven to be exactly correct since it started taking multiple months to get slight tweaks to flight speed or camera movement. 2.5 in August was virtually identical to 2.0 from December of the previous year. I'm sure cultists would point at the hilarious patch notes or compile huge lists of how adjusting the ammunition in a gun or the top speed of something totally disproves my point but if you aren't a crazy idiot arguing for a belief you can see the actual changes from 2.0 -> 2.5 which were the definition of treading water or "maintenance mode."

Meanwhile you still saw Mark Hamill and Squadron 42 actors tweeting about their still ongoing motion capture up until July of that year.

Gamescom comes around and you have an obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe to make even more money. Money flows in. Citcon rolls around and in addition to another obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe you have Squadron 42's appearance cancelled for unexplained reasons. The Leaks had been progressively mentioning a reduced scope in Squadron 42 which was to try and get out "The Prelude." A smaller and cut up version of Squadron 42s content to try and sell it.

After that the holiday sale rolls around and CIG manages to poo poo out Star Marine.

Once 2017 hit Squadron 42 isn't being talked about much anymore. Work probably progressed on it or The Prelude until early this year and at some point the idea had to have been abandoned. I tend to think that all the leaks about how ridiculous the animation data was were correct. Especially when you consider the slides putting this at 10x the speaking roles of actual studio releases of animated films. Chris Roberts had wanted to make a movie and had generated 90% footage and 10% gameplay with most of his budget and the footage was largely worthless due to the work required to turn tens of millions of dollars of motion capture data into anything resembling a game with a narrative that he could sell for $60.

Leaks turned to Squadron 42 being combined with the persistent universe. All outward focus from CIG switches to 3.0 and delivering something that resembles the fake demos they sold last year.

I think they have shifted along this path

- Planning to develop both games simultaneously with 4 studios
(time passes)
- Already past their release date with tens of millions in Squadron 42, complete focus on finish it (Maintenance Mode PU)
(time passes)
- Unable to deal with the hilarious clusterfuck Chris Roberts filmed, scope is reduced and a smaller step will be taken toward Squadron 42, further forgetting the PU (Prelude, A year without patches)
(time passes)
- Development of anything to do with petabytes of mocap footage becomes so expensive that the forgotten PU is now front and center to make money (Fake Demos late 2016)
(a lot of time passes)
- Once the main 2017 sales start getting closer CIG starts producing more fake demos but is now apparently struggling to develop something that actually resembles them. (3.0) Work has obviously just started on it sometime recently but they are running with it 100% and are no longer talking about Squadron 42. Due to almost bankrupting the company on Squadron 42 for years their last resort is a broken tech demo they had largely been ignoring. It's all they have and that leads us to now where they are frantically trying to cram more features into an ancient engine they should have never used in the first place.

It's a shame that we have to speculate so much about what is actually happening at THE WORLD'S MOST OPEN GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO. I'm pretty confident about that chain of events and if I was as crazy as Derek i would probably look up all the supporting tweets and information for each step but I don't care enough to spend an eternity digging through endless amounts of bullshit to highlight my points.

Beet Wagon posted:

lmao, Jester using an alt account to advertise black market services on the refunds subreddit. Now I've seen it all.

Exhibit A: this post by one Ivan_SC advertising black market poo poo on /refunds



Exhibit B: Jester responding to comments in that thread with comments clearly written as "Ivan" lol. These comments don't exist because as soon as he realized the issue he deleted them, but since he's flagged for manual comment approval they're still in the modmail. Whoops!

Thoatse posted:

https://i.imgur.com/FCHnJ3W.gifv

Wise Learned Man posted:

Jester is weird. At times he seems reasonable, and he appears to understand how hosed up most of the denizens of the DS sub are, but then he'll dig his heels in over something petty and argue the most inane and indefensible poo poo for days on end. He's talked about closing the sub at various points over the past couple of years. I have to assume he's tired of moderating it, but kinda hung on when he had a financial stake in defending CIG. If he really has cashed out, then I could see him pulling the plug for good.

trucutru posted:

Hint: They do poo poo-all for moderation 99% of the time.

What changed is that there is very few money to make from idiots at the grey market.

doingitwrong posted:

I put the Making a Space Whale stream on in the background and boy am I glad I did.

The following things are true facts that I learned from watching the stream.

The request to make a space whale has been a recurring winning entry in the "what should we dev in front of you" survey they do for these Happy Hour streams. DiscoLando doesn't like the space whale and has resisted (he made a show of being grumpy about it at the start). After it won like 3 times, they have relented and did the space whale.

Indeed the very idea of a space whale has revealed a tension in the SC community between those who think they should be in the game because they are awesome, and those who think they should not, because they are not even a little bit realistic.

In order to deal with this problem, the lore team created a design brief that would allow for realistic space whales.
I'm going to type that again, so you know I am serious.

In order to deal with this problem, the lore team created a design brief that would allow for realistic space whales.

The idea is that in Star Citizen, space whales are like giant tardigrades (if you don't know about tardigrades, look them up, you are in for a treat). They can survive the vacuum of space but their natural habitat is gas giants. The artist who was live 3D modelling the space whale had only the thinnest notion of what a tardigrade was or could do, but he did not let that stop him from sculpting a giant space whale while theorizing about what it would eat. And how it would propel itself (which is why it has so many extra fins, you see).

I skipped around at this point, so I am not sure where the flowing tendrils come from.

All in all, as you can see the space whale is a victory for fidelity in the hard sci-fi epic Star Citizen.

D_Smart posted:

No, he's a loving moron. Just two weeks ago he was threatening to ban OSC because he claims that he was giving legal advice in the sub, though he clearly wasn't. And that was after this meltdown

He is just using this "I'm closing the sub" as a deflection to the "Jester86 is SC_Ivan" fiasco.

I have known for sometime that not only has he not cashed out, but also that he has every incentive to want /r/ds to exist if only to function as a harassment sub as payback for my noise making which has basically killed the Grey market. Just like I said I would do, back in 2015.

SomethingJones posted:

They've lost all the credibility they thought they had within the space of 5 minutes of Jester loving up, so they're just going to shut it down, lmao

quote:

"I've said it before and I'll say it again. Throughout the history of the internet people have told themselves "I'm going to be the one that gets into an internet argument with Derek Smart, owns him hardcore and shuts him up once and for all" and every single one that has tried have all gone through with their attempts in exactly the same ways. You've seen it most recently on Reddit with his fanclub, or with guys like MoMA. You saw it with Chris Roberts. Now you're seeing it with obey-the-fist!

It's like watching an ever increasing number of people try to put out a fire with their hands, with each one is going "Hah! Those idiots couldn't do it because their hands aren't big enough! Mine are larger and I'm going to spit on them so they're moist! I'll show this fire who's boss!"

Cao Ni Ma posted:

Much like SC will inevitably end, r/ds goes off with whimper instead of a bang

fuctifino posted:

Morningwoodpecker posted:

So when jester was handing out bans and deleting posts from anyone who said he had a financial motive for running r/ds, not only were they absolutely right but he was deliberately and dishonestly abusing his mod powers to conceal it from the nerds he was stealing from and encouraging to attack the warlord.

Scams within scams.

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

I don't know what star citizen is exactly but we appear to be winning

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

I don't know what star citizen is exactly but we appear to be winning

doingitwrong posted:

I put the Making a Space Whale stream on in the background and boy am I glad I did.

The following things are true facts that I learned from watching the stream.

The request to make a space whale has been a recurring winning entry in the "what should we dev in front of you" survey they do for these Happy Hour streams. DiscoLando doesn't like the space whale and has resisted (he made a show of being grumpy about it at the start). After it won like 3 times, they have relented and did the space whale.

Indeed the very idea of a space whale has revealed a tension in the SC community between those who think they should be in the game because they are awesome, and those who think they should not, because they are not even a little bit realistic.

In order to deal with this problem, the lore team created a design brief that would allow for realistic space whales.
I'm going to type that again, so you know I am serious.

In order to deal with this problem, the lore team created a design brief that would allow for realistic space whales.

The idea is that in Star Citizen, space whales are like giant tardigrades (if you don't know about tardigrades, look them up, you are in for a treat). They can survive the vacuum of space but their natural habitat is gas giants. The artist who was live 3D modelling the space whale had only the thinnest notion of what a tardigrade was or could do, but he did not let that stop him from sculpting a giant space whale while theorizing about what it would eat. And how it would propel itself (which is why it has so many extra fins, you see).

I skipped around at this point, so I am not sure where the flowing tendrils come from.

All in all, as you can see the space whale is a victory for fidelity in the hard sci-fi epic Star Citizen.

BoredDellTechnician posted:

/r/DerekSmart has never been a democracy. There will be no public vote as to the future of the subreddit. At this point the moderation staff is severely fatigued and is suffering repeated personal attacks, which is completely unacceptable.
As of next week, /r/DerekSmart will transition to read only and ultimately will be sent to private access at an undetermined future date.

Virtual Captain posted:

Clear some space in the trophy room:

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

I don't know what star citizen is exactly but we appear to be winning

Virtual Captain posted:

The inevitable consequences of alt accounts.

D_Smart posted:

A wise man once said:

AutismVaccine posted:

So the way to victory is not caring and let the crazies own themselves?

Beet Wagon posted:

lmao, Jester using an alt account to advertise black market services on the refunds subreddit. Now I've seen it all.

Exhibit A: this post by one Ivan_SC advertising black market poo poo on /refunds



Exhibit B: Jester responding to comments in that thread with comments clearly written as "Ivan" lol. These comments don't exist because as soon as he realized the issue he deleted them, but since he's flagged for manual comment approval they're still in the modmail. Whoops!