As someone who enjoyed Chris Robert's past games, it saddens me to say that Star Citizen is currently in a bad shape as they have been missing deadline that they set themselves numerous times. I personally had lost my confidence on this project until they get everything together as this game is becoming a vaporware day by day.

For those who are wondering why the "naysayers" have no confidence with Star Citizen, please read the comment from an artist who is working in the game industry.



Source

In my opinion and as someone who backed over a dozen crowd funded projects, I find Star Citizen to be the worst crowd funded projects so far. First of all, it is alright to go a bit nuts with stretch goals in crowd funding with Kickstarter. Adding lofty stretch goals such as FPS module or massive frigates like Idris for the sake of generating hype is a terrible idea as this is feature creep. Feature creep is always discouraged in any projects as it just kept increasing the scope of work while increasing the production cost and time needed, which at the end, the project might never finish if you constantly adding features to it. Not to mention, towels and other cosmetic nonsense are still being added as a gesture of thanks to backers after adding another stretch goals with every million collected that contribute to constant feature creep. Instead spending time to ensure the game is fun and work on the actual game systems. At the same time, actual technical updates that includes development milestones, tech demo, work in progress gameplay and so on are rare and far in between in comparison to fan arts, theory crafting, fiction and more pledge ships. The developers, Cloud Imperium Games(CIG) constantly wants to hype up the game to generate funds to run their massive over 200 developer team while unwilling to show actual game progress. As time goes by, this crowd funded project seemed more like a pyramid or ponzi scheme except no one in the public will get any return of investment.

As time goes on, the crowd funding just get more and more absurd, first with the $200 Constellation which was bad enough, then the $1000 Idris along with numerous pledge ships that cost hundreds of dollars. That is still not enough for CIG as they even went on to add microtrasactions where players can buy in-game currency with real money even when the game does not have anything playable yet. Not to mention, even a monthly subscription system that allows subscribers to obtain information earlier that made it even more absurd. They even took the time to publish impressive artwork books, patches, polo Ts and so on when the game isnt even playable for the public. Imagine if EA did that, they are set to win Worst Company in America for the next 2 years but since this is Chris Roberts, the "savoir" of the space sims, this is all fine by the fans.

The fans, I say these are the most absurd people ever seen in a crowd funded game. There is nothing wrong to be hyped with a game as I am very hyped for Wasteland 2 or Divinity Original Sin but they gone to absurd lengths to form organisations(or clans in most games) when the game has absolutely nothing playable, probably to wait for the game together when the actual game is heading to become a vaporware. Or spending hundreds of dollars for some virtual space ship when most of them arent even finished yet but they decided to call it "pledging" after a year the crowd funding has ended. On the other hand, these people does not allow any criticism on their beloved game that they had "invested" in. To them, it is "In Chris Roberts, we trust" because Chris Roberts promised a lot of impressive cool sound features to keep them excited, then behave childishly or offensive when people criticise their game. Just have a look at the messy General Chat forum. These are the kind of people that you will be playing with in the final game, if it actually comes out at the end.

There are plenty of good ideas in the game so far but the problem is, the scope of work is massive with nothing delivered to the backers yet after numerous delays. Chris Roberts and the executives think that it is wise to get more and more employers to expand the size of the team from 30 all the way to 200 plus instead of controlling the feature creep and have a focused scope of work. With that many man power, CIG still could not release a basic dog fighting module after approximately 6 delays which is ridiculous for a 44 million dollars crowd funded project with 2 years+ of development passed. At very least, this signals bad management in CIG or over bloated scope of work where the massive team could not finish it. Other crowd funded projects with smaller budget managed to deliver their promises mostly on time without having ridiculous project scope.

I hope that you wont pledge for this game until it reaches Beta when most features are implemented.

td:dr: DO NOT PLEDGE FOR THE GAME NOW. It is becoming the next Duke Nukem Forever or Daikatana at the moment.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: May 31 2014, 11:52 PM

Stream is UP.

Fap fap fap.

It is using Cry Engine 3. Kinda see it miles away.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Oct 10 2012, 10:12 PM

Sounds like it is a single player story driven with a Eve Online like end game as multiplayer.

Okay, this is way too ambitious to me. There is a huge chance for it to flop. T_T Still, even Freelancer is fairly ambitious at it's time while Wing Commander sounds absurd back then.

The game sounds interesting though. Looking forward to it. They will be doing a crowd funding too with multiplayer beta coming out in 1 year, and open world multiplayer in 18 months. The game is technically what Freelancer meant to be, with an expanded multiplayer.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Oct 11 2012, 12:20 AM

I think all 3 of them are equally risky but Star Citizen has the highest risk.

Dont get me wrong, this is what i want in a space game that has a single player campaign with a pseudo MMO-FPS styled dedicated private server sort of multiplayer. Very ambitious, to be honest.

This game also have what i wanted the most, the ability to walk around in large capital ships and possibly some planet. In addition, this game also have the feel of Freelancer all over it, with how the guns on the ship turns, extensive use of laser weapons and the flight physic's feel.

Project Eternity is definitely what i want in a RPG. Pledged for that too since Nexus 2: The Gods Awaken's kickstarter is a flop.

Or alternatively, you can throw money here: http://starcitizen.robertsspaceindustries.com/

I think thats how Bethesda work too, where they have some private investors backing them. Everything seemed to work quite well for them, while the investors seemed rather hands off. Just like how Arkane claim that Bethesda never asked them to make a multiplayer game from ground up and support them entirely to build a single player game.

You can run Freelancer in widescreen. I purposely post this in the original resolution without any resize.



You need to mod the game, though, and the UI is kinda screwed up sometimes.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Oct 20 2012, 12:43 PM

I got whole lot more, about 10 crowdfunding projects so far, even though most of them are fairly cheap.

There are 2 kickstarters that i deeply regret for not kickstarting: FTL and Banner Sage.

And yea, i do want to play FTL rather badly.

Im gonna increase mine to either $60 for 300i or $125 for Freelancer since the Freelancer game is one of the best game i ever played for me.

Finally upped my pledge to $60 with Origin 300i.

It is difficult to choose between the Hornet or Freelancer, as it is hard to say which high end ship i will enjoy without even playing the game.

Yeap, all i had paid is $60. Thats it.

Kinda tempted to get Freelancer, since i'll probably go solo in the new game, but seriously, over 100USD for a ship in a game is kinda overboard.

I actually want to collect money to upgrade to Freelancer. I think thats the ship that i want to command in the game.

If im not wrong, alpha will be ready at the end of the year that features basic combat.

if im not wrong, the lowest Scout tier has sold out. Now left the $35 tier left. :/

Still, i might be upgrading to 325i. Better be combat ready from the get go.

I am one of the original backers on their site during their initial funding campaign but I cant find the option on RSI. The $30 tier is greyed out now.

You should have LTI as your friend bought it during the crowdfunding period.

I bought Origin 300i, so, i dont think that applies for me then.

Hmm, does means that I still have one week to decide whether i want to upgrade my 300i to 325i?

I just want to keep my LTI with a 300i or 325i as i think that ship will be a nice backup ready to fly ship if my in game purchased Hornet/M50/Corvette got destroyed multiple times till I couldnt insure it.

I think 350r is kinda useless, as i'll probably not using it as a racer. I am looking for an all rounder ship to start the game and also as backup.

I just want to ask, I know that different variants of 300 uses different engine but is there a list on whats the difference with each engine?

It just that the $15 upgrade is quite pricey for an extra gun and missiles with a better engine.

If you liked Freelancer, I doubt Star Citizen will disappoint, considering Freelancer had a long development cycle then, half way through, Microsoft fired Chris Roberts who was leading the development so that they can take over the project to scale it down to what we have in Freelancer today.

If Chris Roberts could lead the development of the game from pre-production to the end, i think Star Citizen will be decent.