Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
boviscopophobic
Feb 5, 2016

Another leaderboard update, and the numbers are dropping faster than Bitcoin. I almost don't trust these numbers and feel like something's wrong, but I haven't changed my methodology and CIG's leaderboard code also hasn't changed as far as I can tell. We report, you decide.

Total concurrent players for Jan 29 through February 1:

Star Marine: 4.5
Arena Commander: 4.3
Murray Cup: 1.6
Total: 10.4







Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

zcrow posted:

Thajks jobbo. You're good people.

I try. Also go see a Montreal Canadiens game, visit La Ronde in the summer, and explore it and Quebec City when you get a chance.

boviscopophobic
Feb 5, 2016



https://clips.twitch.tv/RealMuddySoymilkAllenHuhu

https://clips.twitch.tv/AffluentAdventurousShrewJebaited

Ponzi
Feb 21, 2016


DEPORTED FROM FLAVOR TOWN

ICSA 67 LOSER
Fun Shoe

Galarox posted:

(off topic) Gods dammit - bloody Netflix is on Murican time... I want to watch Altered Carbon Already. It's one drat good book, (that they've based the TV thingy on) in fact all of the Takeshi Kovacs books are really loving good and I'm stuck waiting for it on GMT. Supose I'll have to go and sleep and catch it tomorrow. :sigh:

When I read the Takeshi Kovacs books I thought 'these would make a great sci-if film/series'. Is it available on Netflix already? I may need to take out a subscription.

Whenever I go into my local bookstore (remember those?) I look to see if there's a new one out, but alas, Richard Morgan seems to be focusing on his fantasy series in recent years.

Raskolnikov
Nov 25, 2003


Just bought this. Thank you friend, so far so good.

boviscopophobic
Feb 5, 2016

Dark Off
Aug 14, 2015




G0RF posted:

Lando has clawed his way to the upper ranks of the “Most Annoying People at CIG” — I find him insufferable to listen to at this point.

I actually was pleased to see an appearance by “Good Sean” on the Livestream earlier this week. “Bad Sean” showed up on that Newegg stream in Q4 to repeat Chris Roberts bullcrap about hundreds of star systems blah blah blah... but Good Sean was actually talking openly about some of their development dysfunction on the livestream which I appreciate hearing confirmed. The talk about Asset Rot evokes Star Marine familiarity, only this time its internal not with a contractor. (Though of course that can’t be possible because Chris said those days were behind them!)

Oh and what a surprise, Lando eventually jumps in to play his valuable role as Normalizer of Organizational Dysfunction because all studios suffer from exactly these same problems. How typical that Chris can count on Lando to boldly proclaim CIG is doing things no other studio ever dared attempt one week because ‘’muh Publishers” and then when he hears Sean being candid about “Asset Rot” and stuff, Lando races to say “this is standard game development.”

Maybe those building AAAA games without design documents, Lando. Maybe those who spend 5 years selling assets before they really started trying to work up the mechanics they pitched from the beginning. You can say it as many times as you want Lando but no, your problems are not just garden variety game studio challenges. No studio funded externally would ever be allowed to screw up as catastrophically as CIG has for 5 years in a row. Chris Roberts would’ve been fired a dozen times by now, Sandi Gardiner would never have been allowed in the door let alone out put in the VP of Marketing slot.

The talent at CIG is stymied and undermined by abject stupidity and hubris that “filters from the top” as they see it. Anyone below them sees it as just more bullshit rolling downhill.

sean tracy actually does read this thread. (or maybe Toast is just forwarding out post's to developers)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224358368?t=32m14s
Basically saying that different proportions isnt the issue. Instead its the clothes. Which does make sense.

my next question is about the hair.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224358368?t=31m08s
so your rendering hair as texture. Instead of using particles/mesh hairs?
That is pretty old tech. Is it because mesh/particle hairs would be too performance heavy?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224358368?t=11m20s

quote:

Sean tracy: our ability to create contend has far exceeded our ability to implement said contend
Disco Lando: ha ha ha. Thats true. ha ha ha
Sean Tracy: its a .... its not a good thing

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224358368?t=06m26s Sean Tracy -tools are done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMQH25mEMw&t=413s Brian Chambers. talking about creating new tools the very next day.
Sean is trapped in very bad place it seems. From outside crytek is poking holes at CIG, and Sean might go down with it. From inside rest of team is poking holes on work Sean has done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMQH25mEMw&t=2416s Cr aint happy about the piracy poo poo storm.

Zzr
Oct 6, 2016

All this situation reminds me about when I was a kid. You lie upon a lie, and add a lie upon a lie. You know it won't end well, but you are happy that your last lie was apparently successful so you go on your day not thinking about it ; you'll only think about it when you will have to add a lie on the unstable pile of lies. When you are a kid and the pile collapse, you feel bad a day and life goes on. When you are an adult and act like a kid with other's money, you go to jail.

Tank Boy Ken
Aug 24, 2012
J4G for life
Fallen Rib

Zzr posted:

All this situation reminds me about when I was a kid. You lie upon a lie, and add a lie upon a lie. You know it won't end well, but you are happy that your last lie was apparently successful so you go on your day not thinking about it ; you'll only think about it when you will have to add a lie on the unstable pile of lies. When you are a kid and the pile collapse, you feel bad a day and life goes on. When you are an adult and act like a kid with other's money, you go to jail. tell everyone one it was Derek Smarts fault and create a new company.

Fixed!

his nibs
Feb 27, 2016

:kayak:Welcome to the:kayak:
Dream Factory
:kayak:
Grimey Drawer

Foo Diddley posted:

Looks like your cover's blown:



hello acemonster07 :wave:

Nunes
Apr 24, 2016

Galarox posted:

As per request. Not one of my best but that Mr the Montoya really grinds my gears.





I really appreciate the fact that despite having a thick mullet, you still managed to capture the essence of the receding hairline.

Gravity_Storm
Mar 1, 2016

boviscopophobic posted:

Another leaderboard update, and the numbers are dropping faster than Bitcoin. I almost don't trust these numbers and feel like something's wrong, but I haven't changed my methodology and CIG's leaderboard code also hasn't changed as far as I can tell. We report, you decide.

Total concurrent players for Jan 29 through February 1:

Star Marine: 4.5
Arena Commander: 4.3
Murray Cup: 1.6
Total: 10.4









How are they bringing in this much dough with 10 concurrent players? Dont these guys like playing games?

no_recall
Aug 17, 2015

Lipstick Apathy

Must've spawned at the end of the 'verse.

no_recall
Aug 17, 2015

Lipstick Apathy

Gravity_Storm posted:

How are they bringing in this much dough with 10 concurrent players? Dont these guys like playing games?

Just replace Star Citizen with Bitcoin.

boviscopophobic
Feb 5, 2016

Gravity_Storm posted:

How are they bringing in this much dough with 10 concurrent players? Dont these guys like playing games?

a) Most whale dreams revolve around the Peeyew rather than the minigames.

b) Few of the big whales actually play the game, they just theorycraft. Theorycrafting and macrotransactions pledging are the entire game to them.

boviscopophobic
Feb 5, 2016

The latest episode of Guard Frequency, which was apparently recorded prior to CIG's latest filing, has lengthy discussions about Star Citizen and the lawsuit in response to listener comments.

http://guardfrequency.com/199

Discussion begins at 57:52.
Tony invokes Enron at 1:00:05.
Ortwin's position in the GLA negotiations at 1:02:25.
At 1:05:10, Tony clearly has an unfavorable opinion of CIG's legal maneuvering to date.
DEREK SMART DEREK SMART DEREK SMART is discussed from 1:06:32-1:09:47.

Ghostlight
Sep 25, 2009

maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me



Hey guys, sorry I got busy playing DBZ but here is an important timeline update.

ManofManyAliases posted:

I nailed the 2.6 release, SM code in 2.6 (turned on with the very next patch)

November 4th 2016

ManofManyAliases posted:

No. Evocati is getting 2.6 within the next 2 weeks. It'll reopen once it moves out of Evocati.

November 24th

ManofManyAliases posted:

MeLKoR posted:

Have your sources told you when 2.6 is going to the ewokatis? I mean... by how much did Chris "overestimate" this? From "a couple of days" to just "a couple of weeks" is like 700% error...
They're pegging this week. Agent wasn't quite right that StarMarine is ready to go, but I'm not allowed to speak more than that.

November 30th
Evocati receives 2.6

December 1st
Pedantic backpedeling even Derek Smart would be proud of.

ManofManyAliases posted:

I was not incorrect in claiming that 2.6 was going live to Evocati.
Also, StarMarine is technically in the build:

"Data/Levels/FPSModule/FPS_Demien/level.pak",
"Data/Levels/FPSModule/FPS_Echo11/level.pak",
"Data/Levels/FPSModule/FPS_Loadout/level.pak",
"Data/Levels/FPSModule/FPS_Loadout/terraintexture.pak",

Two weeks later Roberts put his gross hand on the weird three-finger alien hand that started up the incredible Star Marine generator to convert the planet's supply of .paks into a crippled fps.


gently caress yourself you goddamn fraud.

G0RF
Mar 19, 2015

Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

Virtual Captain posted:

G0RF if you could stop posting good poo poo I might have a chance to get the Thread Recap up to date.

:lol: that’s funny. Don’t let me screw up your work!

Also:

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but as a courtesy to our newer posters and lurkers, I wanted to offer one admittedly subjective summary of the present malaise, particularly with respect to the Star Citizen brand and Chris Roberts reputation as chief architect and spokesman.

(As a disclosure for those unaware, I don’t root for the failure of the project, even if I root for the failure of a select few. I genuinely believe there are hundreds of people working on the project doing their level best to deliver even though goalposts are forever shifting and many dysfunctional processes are both set in stone and protected by the lunatic leadership. That I am pessimistic about the future is not meant as blanket condemnation of the lot; it arises as grim acknowledgement of how densely concentrated organizational power is into the hands of the very worst of its members.)

STATE OF THE GAME - Q1 2018

Despite the claims of the funding tracker, I think parties at the very top of CIG see themselves looking at the downward revenue slope of a saturated market. A couple of years ago, and before many joking embellishments followed, I put up the old bell curve model:



No real inputs — I just grabbed a traditional bell curve off google images and made a guess where things were in late 2015. It was a little premature because I think the blowoff actually hit in 2016...

2016 - THE YEAR CHRIS LOST THE PLOT

The fictive miracles of Gamescom / CitizenCon that year probably gave them the last truly meaningful boosts to organic new demand and deferential hype amplification from the gaming press, even as Roberts himself planted seeds of his own credibility destruction during that same critical period.

How interesting that the Streetroller refund controversy (July 2016) broke a month before Gamescom and “Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen” (September 23rd, 2016) broke right after. If nothing else, that series sent signals far and wide to others in the gaming press that this project about which there had already been much hype and controversy was at the very least struggling, perhaps mightily, under Chris’s chaotic leadership. Kotaku UK’s inclusion of the Level story translation framed the controversial elements (Derek Smart, Beer, “goons”, War) pretty fairly as well, and sent signals via new sourcing that perhaps some of the smoke coming up from The Escapist had some fire under it after all.

The net impact of that exhaustive series — coming as it did between two gollywhopper megahyper CIG events — was a very loud signal to the more serious writers at the more serious publications that perhaps the era of fawning deferential coverage of this Hype Train needed to slow because perhaps there were serious organizational/developmental/ethical problems still challenging it.

One can see the impact of this starting in 2017. Coverage didn’t stop, but it certainly slowed. A new caution and sometime snarkiness started creeping in to the coverage . Kotaku UK made it much safer to call Chris’s project “troubled” and “mired in controversy” and all the other qualifiers so common to stories nowadays. Even Charlie Hall does it, though usually as buried lede.

Yet the greatest blows to CIG during that incredibly consequential period of both hype and controversy were new self-inflicted wounds inflicted by the master himself.

Chris Roberts, with the note perfect timing of a Savant Self-Owner, helped confirm the “Troubled Development” narrative of Kotaku UK’s coverage at CitizenCon 2016, when the long-awaited, much-hyped Squadron 42 demo was a last minute no show after months of build up. Instead we got a ginormous Sandworm as the biggest, baddest symbol for hope yet. It was as fictive as phallic yet for some neither were enough to compensate for the MIA Squadron 42.

The Road to CitizenCon was quickly released as a palliative for the faithful, yet a deeper reading of the work shows only too clearly how damning it is of the development itself. In fact, it is one of the most inadvertent self-incriminating pieces of self-congratulatory agitprop since Sandi Gardiner’s disastrous Sunny’s Diner appearance years prior.

The purposefully manipulative “documentary” showed key developers losing sleep, highly stressed and enduring up to two months of constant crunch to deliver two demonstrations for CitizenCon. The Squadron 42 demo was meant to update fans on the actual progress of the two years late game yet could not be completed in time. The “Homestead” demo was crafted expressly as a fiction starring a fake sandworm, fake enemy NPCs and fake combat, was CitizenCon’s redeeming ‘triumph.’ How perfectly appropriate.

—A BRIEF :tinfoil: TANGENT

(This will read as bridge too far for some, yet I have trouble shaking the sense there’s truth to it.)

I am cynical enough now about Roberts vanity to believe that the Squadron demo never really stood a chance and that Chris and a trusted few knew long in advance he would not show it at CitizenCon.

Yes, that’s pure :tinfoil:, and I’d never fight to defend it, yet the circumstantial case is quite suggestive and it’s hardly unlike Roberts to craft fictions with cynical intent. That is in fact one of his only proven talents and has been key to their stratospheric fundraising (yet at this point of waning appetite for the game even that fundraising itself appears partly a work of manipulation.)

So it’s very worth asking ourselves, ”why would CIG be filming a mini-documentary weeks in advance of CitizenCon 2016, one so maudlin, manipulative and expressly framed as a ‘it’s for the best’ so ’sorry not sorry’ about a demo they fully expected they would show up until two days before the event?”

It makes no sense to christen so dramatic a production so far in advance absent foreknowledge that you were going to need it. And indeed they did need it, as the CitCon 2016 rage was real for many until the opiate of “The Road to CitizenCon” was administered and all was forgiven.

It is more plausible to me that Roberts decided well in advance that Squadron would not be previewed at CitCon because he genuinely feared further humiliating comparisons with Infinite Warfare. It’s Wing Commanderish campaign was as slick, bombastic and cinematic as you’d expect from a AAA powerhouse, the motion capture was often near photoreal, and the prospects of either the media itself or “the anonymous hate campaign” juxtaposing clips from his Squadron demo for a game he himself once described as “the equivalent of huge AAA Call of Duty but better” legitimately worried him. Even the Fanboys had taken to reddit that summer to praise what they’d seen at E3 and chide CIG using Infinite Warfare as rebuke.

Roberts was fortunate that COD futurism fatigue and a bumbled multiplayer launch kept Infinite Warfare from being a franchise triumph, but the single player campaign itself deserved the ample praise its ‘World War 2 story in space’ received and oops, Infinite Warfare even served up a resonant, emotional payoff Roberts thought was only his to deliver.

(BTW- if his RTV claim about touching emotional territory rarely reached with video games was not Roberts telegraphing the self-sacrifing death of ‘Old Man’ at the end of Squadron 42, I’d be amazed. You have to wonder if that’s what Lando is referring to here. It’s the easiest, most obvious possible way to emotionally manipulate the Wing Commander nostalgiacs, so I’m calling that big mashing of the FEELS button here now.)

—END OF :tinfoil:

The absence of a Squadron slice denied the media and his mockers a chance to put his “Call of Duty but better” claims to the Trial by Memes Roberts rightly feared. The ‘presciently’ sanctioned documentary about its absence turned the legitimate anger about the no show demo back onto the victims, provoking yet more guilt they shouldn’t feel for Roberts’ sins. HE was the one crunching devs on show demos. HE was the one demanding that ‘not a joke’ sandworms be grabbed from the sci-fi trope box and inserted into his fundraising fictions. HE was the one selling things not in the game.

With refund dramas and “troubled development” narratives competing directly against Roberts increasingly tiresome flyboy swagger at Gamescom and CitizenCon, it was Roberts who proposed the final test to determine whether a deluded big mouth or a brilliant visionary helmed the enterprise.

Could he or could he not deliver the whole of Stanton by year end? 4 planets, 12 moons and a handful of new mechanics that could finally give long-suffering backers renewed faith in his competence, his genius, or trustworthiness?

He said he thought they could, even though he’d never bothered consulting his Devs on that possibility and indeed, many were horrified to see him once again throw a gauntlet down they’d never be able to lift. Yet would this time be different? Was he just a chronic mismanager with a runaway mouth running a Troubled Development, or might Chris actually deliver this time?

No, he would not.

No more than he could deliver Squadron 42 at the end of 2015 as he’d said they do. No more than he could deliver Star Marine in “3 weeks time” as he said that same day he’d do.

As with nearly all things but disappointment, Chris Roberts delivered much less, much later, and in the case of 3.0, even upon delivery, he delivered mediocrity at a fraction of the originally promised scale.

Let us remember, too, that Chris had justified the long wait of his all important 3.0 patch because it needed extra polish and bugfixing. It needed to be friendlier than any patch prior because so many new users would be signing up. Yet a year and a half after it dazzled the crowds of the faithful, it finally arrived in the classic tradition backers had miserably come to expect — broken, empty, lifeless and stuttering.

With 3.0, Roberts failed the test he himself inadvertently proposed.

In so doing, he confirmed for all but the most devoted faithful that his critics were right. The dichotomy that prompted so much uncertainty and debate in 2016 was over. It was not the cynics who bested Roberts, it was Roberts, and he did it as the cynics expected he would, by being himself.

2017 - THE YEAR OF LIVING DISSAPOINTINGLY

If 2016 was the zenith of years of cumulating hype and expectation, 2017 was the year of diminishing expectations and growing outrages. Until the “miraculous” turnaround of the anniversary sale you could see it in their own reported numbers. You could read it in the growing number of full combat comment fields under any Star Citizen news story. New voices of skepticism on the Star Citizen subreddit were sometimes catapulted to the top of the charts not with memes or praises but with criticisms, warnings, frustrations. The widely read /Games subreddit saw skepticism about the project flourishing amongst the mainstream gamer population.

In 2017, CIG’s efforts to bolster the faithful at the usual venues only compounded the damage further.

Gamescom 2017 delivered cringe so real it hurt, reinforcing further still the “Troubled Narrative” claims and sending the “Chris Roberts, Savior of PC Gaming” myths up in glorious self-parody.

CitizenCon 2017 delivered this year’s model Sandworm, a planet covered in buildings melding the newly released Blade Runner with the prequel’s Coruscant signifying little beyond “Chris Roberts Fever dream hype demo”, 2017 edition. Was it cool to watch? Sure. Was it coming soon to the game? Not a chance, and even the Believers know that. It was simply the latest in a long line of golden calves Roberts erected before the people that they might worship false divinity as he lead them once again in circles through his wilderness. That some will still do it though they know the calf wrought of their own melted wealth speaks more to their desperation than true faithfulness. Yet what other choice has Roberts left then?

2018: CAPITULATION TO THE OBVIOUS FOR ALL BUT THE OBLIVIOUS

Though the year-end numbers managed to mask it, 2017 was the year Chris Roberts faced down his mortal enemy — himself — and lost.

Those looking ahead in 2018 for truer hopes to cling to than bygone show buzz and the 100th rewatch of the Imagine video will find an emptier horizon line than in prior years.

That we’ll see no Squadron release in 2018 is obvious already. Chris Roberts is unlikely to explicitly state the infuriating obvious and instead will just show clips and progress on a monthly basis like the carrot on a stick it has been since 2012.

The decision not to attend Gamescom this year is itself a telling sign, yet lest we risk missing it, CIG explicitly stated their reasoning; they don’t want their developers distracted with all the preparation work such an event demands of them. That this concern never stopped them before and was glorified in “The Road to CitizenCon” suggests a deeper reading, and that reading is capitulation.

What good might such an event be when they’ve saturated the market and hype fatigue plagues even the faithful? When the very game itself has become so unplayable that marketing it courts frustration and mockery? There is too little to be gained this year in so exhausted a marketplace with so damaged a brand, so tired a narrative, so broken a game.

So with Squadron and Gamescom off the calendar, 3.1 aiming for performance improvements only (if they can get them) and the features of this summer’s 3.2 so uncertain that Community Manager Disco Lando scoffs at community attempts to nail them down, what else might we expect this year?

SPECULATIVE: Player housing for sale

Cash purchasable player structures may be a high priority now, though Chris has said nothing recently to explicitly affirm that. Land claims were the thin end of that wedge and Lando’s very first question on the very first episode of Calling All Devs was about Land Claims.

How curious that something which earned them bad PR and a fan backlash goes to the front of the question line. Stranger still that Dave Haddock was the one being asked as he will have absolutely nothing to do with its implementation. The cynical reading would be that Land Claims (and later structure sales) are a Chris Roberts priority being fast-tracked out of LA at his insistence for financial reasons. Roberts himself went into his rationale for Land Claims and pitched it as the protection racket it so clearly was designed to be. Land claims bore all the hallmarks of a new feature made urgent priority not because the game needed it so much as because Roberts wants new revenue lines ASAP.

Since he employs a gigantic army of modelers and artists it would not be surprising if a subset is already working up models for shacks, hideouts, condos, bases, rest stops, whatever... I’d also not be surprised if he’s bent Garriott’s ear for tips but even if not there is a lot that can be gleaned just from playing SOTA and exploring their cash shop. Where Garriott sells castles, Roberts would sell space mansions, and the rationale would be “you don’t really want to park your 890 Jump at just a sad little outpost, do you? Poorly matched AND unprotected? Well have I got a deal for you!”

SPECULATIVE: For Sale By Owner, a piece of the Dream Factory itself?

Similarly, it wouldn’t be surprising if Garriott’s seedinvest experiment hasn’t been studied for replication by Roberts as funding sources decline. It wasn’t a barn burner but they hit their minimum target, and Roberts being Roberts, he’s probably doing napkin calculations already to map out worst and best case yields.

These aren’t explicit predictions so much as cynical hunches, and the cynicism is rooted in seeing last year defy worst case scenarios. There are obviously some big fires they need to put out too this year, not the least of which is basic playability.

As much as it probably hurts Chris to put player needs ahead of his own wants for a change, until they fix their networking / performance issues, they’re pretty much in a tar pit unable to get back to the good work Chris prefers; selling things, redesigning things, polishing things. It remains to be seen if and to what extent they can clear those obstacles.

Even assuming they clear the Stability / Performance hurdle, a hurdle they’ve given little confidence they can overcome, the next hurdle before them remains no less vexing — can they start to design a game worth playing? Roberts himself is no ally to such an endeavor; indeed, he has proven only too clearly how much it disinterested him, for during the six years he could spent designing and refining The Best drat Space Sim Ever, he instead was focused on an entirely different game and still it consumes him. Selling an unbelievable future at an unjustifiable price to anyone still foolish enough to trust the industry’s biggest underdeliverer will somehow deliver it.

G0RF fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Feb 27, 2018

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

Sarsapariller posted:

On the other hand, he appears to have actually taken Chris Roberts to court instead of just threatening to for the last 3 years

Sometimes it's worth reading a 1000 posts.

Sometimes.

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

Sarsapariller, you're alright

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

Colostomy Bag posted:

A great nightmare is over. This fix was a one time courtesy.

Sounds like a great writing prompt

Hey, Chris, you got half a day spare?

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

tuo posted:

You just need to layer on the tophat

This is exactly what I say before making terrible posts

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

That wheel was squeaking a great deal so I'll ignite the oil once it stops issuing sound

Sillybones
Aug 10, 2013

go away,
spooky skeleton,
go away

his nibs posted:

hello acemonster07 :wave:

'Known' Goon is such a fun term. Hunting for the hidden enemy instead of just talking to people as if they were people.

Beexoffel
Oct 4, 2015

Herald of the Stimpire

:yarg:

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

Foo Diddley posted:

When a kickstarted belt is the least of your stupid financial decisions :laffo:

lmao

Beexoffel
Oct 4, 2015

Herald of the Stimpire

xoFcitcrA posted:

How's the 'vette treating you? Finally saved enough for an Annie, but not enough to buy her all of the toys I want to. Plus I have no idea how combat would work in something that large.
Reading this thread makes me want to go play ED:H every time.
Because I can.



I'm in the same place with the 'vette: it's a cargo boat now to get the credits for all the pew pew that I want to install. I don't know how combat works either, haven't done much of it. I'm going for lots of turreted stuff for now and hope one of my mates will man them occasionally. Because multicrew is in.
I've ground exploration because it relaxes me. Then I ground for the corvette because it relaxed me. It's more a trophy than a tool, haha.
And a good place to put CIG legal quotes on.

Edit: It turns quicker than an Anaconda.

Beexoffel fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Feb 2, 2018

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

CrazyTolradi posted:

Derek is a man of words, but Streetroller is a man of action.

Gunna quote this again when the true space court begins.

Dark Off
Aug 14, 2015




G0RF posted:

:lol: that’s funny. Don’t let me screw up your work!

Also:

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but as a courtesy to our newer posters and lurkers, I wanted to offer one admittedly subjective summary of the present malaise, particularly with respect to the Star Citizen brand and Chris Roberts reputation as chief architect and spokesman.

(As a disclosure for those unaware, I don’t root for the failure of the project, even if I root for the failure of a select few. I genuinely believe there are hundreds of people working on the project doing their level best to deliver even though goalposts are forever shifting and many dysfunctional processes are both set in stone and protected by the lunatic leadership. That I am pessimistic about the future is not meant as blanket condemnation of the lot; it arises as grim acknowledgement of how densely concentrated organizational power is into the hands of the very worst of its members.)

STATE OF THE GAME - Q1 2018

Despite the claims of the funding tracker, I think parties at the very top of CIG see themselves looking at the downward revenue slope of a saturated market. A couple of years ago, and before many joking embellishments followed, I put up the old bell curve model:



No real inputs — I just grabbed a traditional bell curve off google images and made a guess where things were in late 2015. It was a little premature because I think the blowoff actually hit in 2016...

2016 - THE YEAR CHRIS LOST THE PLOT

The fictive miracles of Gamescom / CitizenCon that year probably gave them the last truly meaningful boosts to organic new demand and deferential hype amplification from the gaming press, even as Roberts himself planted seeds of his own credibility destruction during that same critical period.

How interesting that the Streetroller refund controversy (July 2016) broke a month before Gamescom and “Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen” (September 23rd, 2016) broke right after. If nothing else, that series sent signals far and wide to others in the gaming press that this project about which there had already been much hype and controversy was at the very least struggling, perhaps mightily, under Chris’s chaotic leadership. Kotaku UK’s inclusion of the Level story translation framed the controversial elements (Derek Smart, Beer, “goons”, War) pretty fairly as well, and sent signals via new sourcing that perhaps some of the smoke coming up from The Escapist had some fire under it after all.

The net impact of that exhaustive series — coming as it did between two gollywhopper megahyper CIG events — was a very loud signal to the more serious writers at the more serious publications that perhaps the era of fawning deferential coverage of this Hype Train needed to slow because perhaps there were serious organizational/developmental/ethical problems still challenging it.

One can see the impact of this starting in 2017. Coverage didn’t stop, but it certainly slowed. A new caution and sometime snarkiness started creeping in to the coverage . Kotaku UK made it much safer to call Chris’s project “troubled” and “mired in controversy” and all the other qualifiers so common to stories nowadays. Even Charlie Hall does it, though usually as buried lede.

Yet the greatest blows to CIG during that incredibly consequential period of both hype and controversy were new self-inflicted wounds inflicted by the master himself.

Chris Roberts, with the note perfect timing of a Savant Self-Owner, helped confirm the “Troubled Development” narrative of Kotaku UK’s coverage at CitizenCon 2016, when the long-awaited, much-hyped Squadron 42 demo was a last minute no show after months of build up. Instead we got a ginormous Sandworm as the biggest, baddest symbol for hope yet. It was as fictive as phallic yet for some neither were enough to compensate for the MIA Squadron 42.

The Road to CitizenCon was quickly released as a palliative for the faithful, yet a deeper reading of the work shows only too clearly how damning it is of the development itself. In fact, it is one of the most inadvertent self-incriminating pieces of self-congratulatory agitprop since Sandi Gardiner’s disastrous Sunny’s Diner appearance years prior.

The purposefully manipulative “documentary” showed key developers losing sleep, highly stressed and enduring up to two months of constant crunch to deliver two demonstrations for CitizenCon. The Squadron 42 demo was meant to update fans on the actual progress of the two years late game yet could not be completed in time. The “Homestead” demo was crafted expressly as a fiction starring a fake sandworm, fake enemy NPCs and fake combat, was CitizenCon’s redeeming ‘triumph.’ How perfectly appropriate.

—A BRIEF :tinfoil: TANGENT

(This will read as bridge too far for some, yet I have trouble shaking the sense there’s truth to it.)

I am cynical enough now about Roberts vanity to believe that the Squadron demo never really stood a chance and that Chris and a trusted few knew long in advance he would not show it at CitizenCon.

Yes, that’s pure :tinfoil:, and I’d never fight to defend it, yet the circumstantial case is quite suggestive and it’s hardly unlike Roberts to craft fictions with cynical intent. That is in fact one of his only proven talents and has been key to their stratospheric fundraising (yet at this point of waning appetite for the game even that fundraising itself appears partly a work of manipulation.)

So it’s very worth asking ourselves, ”why would CIG be filming a mini-documentary weeks in advance of CitizenCon 2016, one so maudlin, manipulative and expressly framed as a ‘it’s for the best’ so ’sorry not sorry’ about a demo they fully expected they would show up until two days before the event?”

It makes no sense to christen so dramatic a production so far in advance absent foreknowledge that you were going to need it. And indeed they did need it, as the CitCon 2016 rage was real for many until the opiate of “The Road to CitizenCon” was administered and all way forgiven.

It is more plausible to me that Roberts decided well in advance that Squadron would not be previewed at CitCon because he genuinely feared further humiliating comparisons with Infinite Warfare. It’s Wing Commanderish campaign was as slick, bombastic and cinematic as you’d expect from a AAA powerhouse, the motion capture was often near photoreal, and the prospects of either the media itself or “the anonymous hate campaign” juxtaposing clips from his Squadron demo for a game he himself once described as “the equivalent of huge AAA Call of Duty but better” legitimately worried him. Even the Fanboys had taken to reddit that summer to praise what they’d seen at E3 and chide CIG using Infinite Warfare as rebuke.

Roberts was fortunate that COD futurism fatigue and a bumbled multiplayer launch kept Infinite Warfare from being a franchise triumph, but the single player campaign itself deserved the ample praise for its ‘World War 2 story in space’ received and oops, Infinite Warfare even delivered the emotional payoff Roberts thought was only his to deliver.

(BTW- if his RTV claim about touching emotional territory rarely reached with video games was not Roberts telegraphing the self-sacrifing death of ‘Old Man’ at the end of Squadron 42, I’d be amazed. You have to wonder if that’s what Lando is referring to here. It’s the easiest, most obvious possible way to emotionally manipulate the Wing Commander nostalgiacs, so I’m calling that big mashing of the FEELS button here now.)

—END OF :tinfoil:

The absence of a Squadron slice denied the media and his mockers a chance to put his “Call of Duty but better” claims to the Trial by Memes Roberts rightly feared. The ‘presciently’ sanctioned documentary about its absence turned the legitimate anger about the no show demo back onto the victims, provoking yet more guilt they shouldn’t feel for Roberts’ sins. HE was the one crunching devs on show demos. HE was the one demanding that ‘not a joke’ sandworms be grabbed from the sci-fi trope box and inserted into his fundraising fictions. HE was the one selling things not in the game.

With refund dramas and “troubled development” narratives competing directly against Roberts increasingly tiresome flyboy swagger at Gamescom and CitizenCon, it was Roberts who proposed the final test to determine whether a deluded bug mouth or a brilliant visionary helmed the enterprise.

Could he or could he not deliver the whole of Stanton by year end? 4 planets, 12 moons and a handful of new mechanics that could finally give long-suffering backers renewed faith in his competence, his genius, or trustworthiness?

He said he thought they could, even though he’d never bothered consulting his Devs on that possibility and indeed, many were horrified to see him once again throw a gauntlet down they’d never be able to lift. Yet would this time be different? Was he just a guy with chronic mismanager with a runaway mouth running a Troubled Development, or might Chris actually deliver this time?

No, he could not.

No more than he could deliver Squadron 42 at the end of 2015 as he’d said they do. No more than he could deliver Star Marine in “3 weeks time” as he said that same day he’d do.

As with nearly all things but disappointment, Chris Roberts delivered much less, much later, and in the case of 3.0, even upon delivery, he delivered mediocrity at a fraction of the originally promised scale.

Let us remember, too, that Chris had justified the long wait of his all important 3.0 patch because it needed extra polish and bugfixing. It needed to be friendlier than any patch prior because so many new users would be signing up. Yet a year and a half after it dazzled the crowds of the faithful, it finally arrived in the classic tradition backers had miserably come to expect — broken, empty, lifeless and stuttering.

With 3.0, Roberts failed the test he himself inadvertently proposed.

In so doing, he confirmed for all but the most devoted faithful that his critics were right. The dichotomy that prompted so much uncertainty and debate in 2016 was over. It was not the cynics who bested Roberts, it was Roberts, and he did it as the cynics expected he would, by being himself.

2017 - THE YEAR OF LIVING DISSAPOINTINGLY

If 2016 was the zenith of years of cumulating hype and expectation, 2017 was the year of diminishing expectations and growing outrages. Until the “miraculous” turnaround of the anniversary sale you could see it in their own reported numbers. You could read it in the growing number of full combat comment fields under any Star Citizen news story. New voices of skepticism on the Star Citizen subreddit were sometimes catapulted to the top of the charts not with memes or praises but with criticisms, warnings, frustrations. The widely read /Games subreddit saw skepticism about the project flourishing amongst the mainstream gamer population.

In 2017, CIG’s efforts to bolster the faithful at the usual venues only compounded the damage further.

Gamescom 2017 delivered cringe so real it hurt, reinforcing further still the “Troubled Narrative” claims and sending the “Chris Roberts, Savior of PC Gaming” myths up in glorious self-parody.

CitizenCon 2017 delivered this year’s model Sandworm, a planet covered in buildings melding the newly released Blade Runner with the prequel’s Coruscant signifying little beyond “Chris Roberts Fever dream hype demo, 2017 edition. Was it cool to watch? Sure. Was it coming soon to the game? Not a chance, and even the Believers know that. It was simply the latest in a long line of golden calves Roberts erected before the people that they might worship false divinity as he lead them once again in circles through his wilderness. That some will still do it though they know the calf wrought of their own melted wealth speaks more to their desperation than true faithfulness. Yet what other choice has Roberts left then?

2018: CAPITULATION TO THE OBVIOUS FOR ALL BUT THE OBLIVIOUS

Though the year-end numbers managed to mask it, 2017 was the year Chris Roberts faced down his mortal enemy — himself — and lost.

Those looking ahead in 2018 for truer hopes to cling to than bygone show buzz and the 100th rewatch of the Imagine video will find an emptier horizon line than in prior years.

That we’ll see no Squadron release in 2018 is obvious already. Chris Roberts is unlikely to explicitly state the infuriating obvious and instead will just show clips and progress on a monthly basis like the carrot on a stick it has been since 2012.

The decision not to attend Gamescom this year is itself a telling sign, yet lest we risk missing it, CIG explicitly stated their reasoning; they don’t want their developers distracted with all the preparation work such an event demands of them. That this concern never stopped them before and was glorified in “The Road to CitizenCon” suggests a deeper reading, and that reading is capitulation.

What good might such an event be when they’ve saturated the market and hype fatigue plagues even the faithful? When the very game itself has become so unplayable that marketing it courts frustration and mockery? There is too little to be gained this year in so exhausted a marketplace with so damaged a brand, so tired a narrative, so broken a game.

So with Squadron and Gamescom off the calendar, 3.1 aiming for performance improvements only (if they can get them) and the features of this summer’s 3.2 so uncertain that Community Manager Disco Lando scoffs at community attempts to nail them down, what else might we expect this year?

SPECULATIVE: Player housing for sale

Cash purchasable player structures may be a high priority now, though Chris has said nothing recently to explicitly affirm that. Land claims were the thin end of that wedge and Lando’s very first question on the very first episode of Calling All Devs was about Land Claims.

How curious that something which earned them bad PR and a fan backlash goes to the front of the question line. Stranger still that Dave Haddock was the one being asked as he will have absolutely nothing to do with its implementation. The cynical reading would be that Land Claims (and later structure sales) are a Chris Roberts priority being fast-tracked out of LA at his insistence for financial reasons. Roberts himself went into his rationale for Land Claims and pitched it as the protection racket it so clearly was designed to be. Land claims bore all the hallmarks of a new feature made urgent priority not because the game needed it so much as because Roberts wants new revenue lines ASAP.

Since he employees a gigantic army of modelers and artists it would not be surprising if a subset is already working up models for shacks, hideouts, condos, bases, rest stops, whatever... I’d also not be surprised if he’s bent Garriott’s ear for tips but even if not there is a lot that can be gleaned just from playing SOTA and exploring their cash shop. Where Garriott sells castles, Roberts would sell space mansions, and the rationale would be “you don’t really want to park your 890 Jump at just a sad little outpost, do you? Poorly matched AND unprotected? Well have I got a deal for you!”

SPECULATIVE: For Sale By Owner, a piece of the Dream Factory itself?

Similarly, it wouldn’t be surprising if Garriott’s seedinvest experiment hasn’t been studied for replication by Roberts as funding sources decline. It wasn’t a barn burner but they hit their minimum target, and Roberts being Roberts, he’s probably doing napkin calculations already to map out worst and best case yields.

These aren’t explicit predictions so much as cynical hunches, and the cynicism is rooted in seeing last year defy worst case scenarios. There are obviously some big fires they need to put out too this year, not the least of which is basic playability.

As much as it probably hurts Chris to put player needs ahead of his own wants for a change, until they fix their networking / performance issues, they’re pretty much in a tar pit unable to get back to the good work Chris prefers; selling things, redesigning things, polishing things. It remains to be seen if and to what extent they can clear those obstacles.

Even assuming they clear the Stability / Performance hurdle, a hurdle they’ve given little confidence they can overcome, the next hurdle before them remains no less vexing — can they start to design a game worth playing? Roberts himself is no ally to such an endeavor; indeed, he has proven only too clearly how much it disinterested him, for during the six years he could spent designing and refining The Best drat Space Sim Ever, he instead was focused on an entirely different game and still it consumes him. Selling an unbelievable future at an unjustifiable price to anyone still foolish enough to trust the industry’s biggest underdeliverer will somehow deliver it.

good post :five: also i love the contrast between this post and low effort noise post's of tophat following it :allears:

i also am seeing that 2018 is turning into year when star citizen became a public joke. That can be told publicly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAX1rJv0X9k&t=1746s

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
I should write a play about two con artists who are trying to come up with a game that'll bomb on release so they can use kickstarter money for their own hedonism. When they're trying to come up with a game idea they look through various scripts and at one point pick up Squadron 42 and remark, "It's perfect...but this is only a two hour play! We don't have two weeks!" and then toss it to one side.

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
I put plenty of effort into my posts, I work as hard like Chris Roberts when he's adjusting code himself

Nyast
Nov 14, 2017

BLAZING AT THE
SPEED OF LIGHT

Preen Dog posted:

Lol, how long has that bug been around? Just like all the rest of them.

Not a surprise though. Imagine if the PU was playable. Even just 1% of CiG's customer base would bankrupt them with server costs.

~1GB per hour * 20,000 players. 400 servers.

Guys, Chris is actually a genius. His staff want to make a game but he knows better than that.

Let's do the maths: 1 GB * 20,000 * 24h * 30d = 14400 TB/month

Assuming 0.04$ / GB ( inferred from https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ ) that's $576K/month, or almost $7M/year, just in bandwidth. Renting 400 dedicated servers must cost a bit too.

Dark Off
Aug 14, 2015




Mr.Tophat posted:

I put plenty of effort into my posts, I work as hard like Chris Roberts when he's adjusting code himself

poo poo. We need to setup kickstarter to support this. Otherwise its going to be a missed opportunity to get rich

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:

Dark Off posted:

poo poo. We need to setup kickstarter to support this. Otherwise its going to be a missed opportunity to get rich

I'm used to getting peanuts due to this gallery so

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
"Maybe this patch will be better," I say as I crawl with what bloody stumps I have left to an unexplored area of minefield

Thoatse
Feb 29, 2016

Lol said the scorpion, lmao

Nunes posted:

I really appreciate the fact that despite having a thick mullet, you still managed to capture the essence of the receding hairline.


I believe this is called a skullet

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
The rain is descending hard and the lovely pipeline is behind me, I tear off my clothes and scream into that dark thunderous sky, "IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE" and I return to the pipe and wiggle myself incarcerated

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
"It's not really gambling," I say with a mouthful of egg salad sandwich which is too heavy on the cress, "you're not rolling the dice here," I say as I decline another refund request via a strangely worded e-mail.

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
"I'm really getting into the stride of things," a developer says on the fifth year of work on a pre-alpha to himself as the lights flicker for but a moment

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mr.Tophat
Apr 7, 2007

You clearly don't understand joke development :justpost:
Brother, can ye spare me some cutter?

I aint got no jpeg to fly, not since the lawsuit

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5