Star Citizen surpasses $100 million dollars in funding

Is it bad that I want this game to succeed because of the haters?

I'll probably play the campaign at some point.

Might even build a PC for it.

No, that's not bad, it's just weird. I want it to succeed because if it's realized the way intended, I want to play it.
 
The F2P argument has always been shaky, but people like to cling to their delusions.

Honestly I've just given up on the hate patrol at this point. The game is vaporware and doesn't exist, despite the fact I just hopped in a connie last night and took to the skies for some multicrew combat with someone kind enough to let me try the turret. The game is trying things that can't be done apparently, yet some of those things were achieved in the latest build. It's just an endless cycle of bullshit excuses and when you point out how they're wrong they either run for cover or try a different angle.

The really dumb thing to me is that there ARE some shortcomings still as yet, and there ARE problems that we could be discussing but instead we always roll around to the same crap. The drive by's always seem to be people who don't even want to hear that it's getting somewhere, otherwise they would have updated their argument from 2014.
 
Regarding where this game gets all its customers for such a niche genre, I'll give an anecdotal bit on myself. I'm 23. I don't make a lot, but I make enough to not worry about every little thing. Bought my first dedicated gaming PC this year. Backed $150 into this project,not because of some ship but because I have faith in this project and want to do more than my fair share.

If this game was only about spaceships and didn't give you the option to leave them, I woudn't have spent $1.


Is the game worth playing in its current state? Looks pretty interesting but not sure if I should wait for the full release instead.
Right now the game is still a free trial I think, not sure when that ends. From my experience with the latest update, the sandbox part (walking in space stations, flying your ship, EVA out if your ship, etc) generally crashes after 10 minutes or so but if you're lucky you can get a long session going. After much perseverance I got a 2 hour interrupted session yesterday and it was the most promising experience I've ever had. Aside from that, the hangar module is really well detailed and runs fine if you just want to soak it all in, same with the social module (walking on a planetary city with others). The Arena Commander works great as well, haven't experienced a crash with that. Arena commander features a flight training mode, missions against NPC pirates playable offline or in coop, and even a racing mode set place in the clouds of a WipEout-esque planet.

I wouldn't say there's enough to make it your primary game right now, but there is enough to get enjoyment from and believe in the future.
 
I honestly hope it works out, everything looks great so far but people's expectations for the game are way too high. It might deliver everything, and more, and people will still be disappointed. Shame really
 
too bad I would not be able. to play the game when it's finally completed because of all those people who paid for their ships and have an huge starting advantage.
can accept these thing on a f2p game, not on a retail release

People have already countered this argument with the different ships, different roles aspect. (Somebody with a $350 Crucible repair ship isn't going to even compete with people doing combat, exploration, trading, FPS, etc.)

In addition to that, there's also the crew factor. Bigger ships by and large require more crew to efficiently run them. Using AI crew will only get you so far (and you have to pay the AI anyhow). So these big ships need both people to own them, and people to help run them. Not everybody is going to be out there running them solo due to the logistics issues. Thus this "advantage" filters down to multiple people that otherwise wouldn't have access to those ships.

Case in point, I along with a couple others in the Neogaf organization own an Idris. That's a $1250 combat focused capital ship which should give us a "huge starting advantage" going by it being one of the most expensive ships in the game. Realistically, however, they're going to require the aid from other members of the organization. Others that don't own one. Thus our "advantage" filters down and empowers that guy who has an Aurora starter package and wants to give crewing a capital ship a try. The biggest spenders also have more ships than they can realistically use at once, so some of those ships will become "loaner" ships to other org mates.

This is a social game with group play dynamics. Power and advantages come more from who you know and connect with than they do from what you own individually. While you're free to play as a lone wolf, constantly comparing yourself to everybody else and competing with them, you'll always be at a disadvantage when confronted with a group.
 
I think people often forget about this when comparing the 2 these days. I had forgotten until I read your post just now.

I almost feel bad for Elite given what they achieved since then, but I didn't back their KS for exactly this reason.

I gave up when they scrapped single player mode tbh, with that wishy washy excuse.

I understand why they did it, the technical aspects of it and all that, but I don't respect the way they went about it.
 
Here some Arena Commander at 60fps in alpha 2.0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvte95jCbwY

I need a flight joystick..

giphy.gif
 
Is it bad that I want this game to succeed because of the haters?

I'll probably play the campaign at some point.

Might even build a PC for it.

Wanting a game to succeed? What's wrong with you? You should be wanting it to tank so you can reactionmemegiflol in the sales topics like everyone else.
 
Elite Dangerous sounded interesting. As someone who sunk well over 500 hours into the X series from Egosoft, I was curious.
But not THAT curious to buy it day 1. Sometimes 1 Month after release I got the itch to maybe try it out. But they werent on Steam at that time and I didnt want to register on a new service, so I let it be.
When the time came and they released on Steam (surely to blow needed life into the franchise, i heard enough negative things about it (boring etc.) that I didnt fell to buy it anymore.

What I want to say: If the game had a Single Player Campaign, I would have bought Elite Dangerous in the end. The Multiplayer only aspect interested me only in the beginning and they shot the door with their website only buy-in.
 
The final product better be AAA caliber at this point. That is a huge pile of money.

The alpha product is already AAAA caliber graphics-wise and much better than that gameplaywise. Please, PLEASE at least learn about the progress of the game before posting.
 
Is there any new-ish video of the FPS module? last time I saw something from it, it looked rocky.. or sort of slideshowy. Not very tight. I'd love to see if they have made strides in this area.
 
What I want to say: If the game had a Single Player Campaign, I would have bought Elite Dangerous in the end. The Multiplayer only aspect interested me only in the beginning and they shot the door with their website only buy-in.

The actual gameplay of elite dangerous is alot of fun, but yeah the fact that it is a pretty pure sandbox meant i got bored of it after a while. Will be interesting to see where they take it in the future however.
 
The alpha product is already AAAA caliber graphics-wise and much better than that gameplaywise. Please, PLEASE at least learn about the progress of the game before posting.

I've seen enough progression on the game to know that elements of it are AAA in quality. But what I mean is, will it all come together in the end to create one big congruent AAAAAA experience, or will it end up being segregated moments of genius that will be stitched together through sloppy execution?

I would love to see this game succeed, as it is something that we have never seen done before. $100 million is an insane amount of money, enough to fund half a dozen mid-tear quality games. Hopefully they are managing their money well on this one. I know they brought in Mark Hamill which is an awesome throwback to the Wing Commander series.
 
I love this game. On only in for 65 dollars but what I've played is amazing so far and shows what a PC can do.

I'm sure No Man's Sky will be fun, and Elite:Dangerous is cool but I think this will be THE game for all space fans.
 
So if they plan to stop selling ships and other in-game things, how will they support the PU? Assuming the launch $$ can sustain for a bit that well will dry eventually.
 
Hacking the game into three chapters? Delaying it?

Also most of the funding didn't come from 30/60$ tier. The average is almost 100$ per person.

The biggest fear isn't that they aren't going to make it. My biggest concern is that they will screw someone balancing it: either 4k ships are going to be an endless grind, or the 4k backers are going to be disappointed. I know that it was more of the donation towards development, but I can't imagine people being happy if everyone can build that ship in a week. Or if someone wants to do trucking/harvesting quests and they are stuck with a small racing/fighting ship. The business model of the game (buy to play) shouldn't force people into grinding to get the gear for desired quests.

Their overall approach is also crap: SC is everything: campaign, competitive FPS (seriously?), competitive dogfighting, instances, racing, mmo universe, economy etc. And they are doing it all at once...

Going from a video with Chris Roberts promising Sq42 being around 50 hours of content to episodes where backers are only getting "around 20 hours" of content.

It's a shitty move that would be getting called out if the SC community wasnt so rabidly loyal.

In regards to the single player and it's content:
Chris Hill said:
tl;dr: Absolutely zero content as originally offered has been shifted or moved. You would have to purchase episode 2 and 3 seperately.

What's being referred to as 'Episode 1' is "Squadron 42" as it's always been intended, with all the missions and features promised in the crowdfunding campaign. What's happened since is that we've expanded the "mission disk" add-on (which early backers already have) into an entire second campaign. In addition to that EXPANSION of offerings, we've also added plans for another as-yet-untitled sequel.
Reference
Ben Lesnick said:
The hope from the start has been that Squadron 42 would kick off a whole series of games, much like the 'main series' Wing Commanders back in the day... while the Star Citizen persistent universe would kick off at an unspecified point in the future and continue to evolve in its own way. Once we've built the technology and evolved the world and balanced everything, there's unlimited stories to tell. I know we talked about additional Squadron 42s early on, because we joked about calling them Squadron 43 and Squadron 44 back in the early days :)

All you're seeing now is that we're trying to figure out the best way to express that. Squadron 43 and Squadron 44 are good joke names, but they don't really make sense... it's more reasonable to brand 'Squadron 42' as a series rather than something like 'Squadron 42 2.' The only real 'change' here is that Behind Enemy Lines isn't a Secret Missions-style mission disk anymore... it's going to be the next part in the saga. And at least some of our backers get a great bonus, an additional AAA single player game because they backed early.

As for estimated hours to complete the game, I can only say... I really hate trying to quantify those kinds of estimates. It's a game with no one way to play it that we haven't finished yet. Is that 20 hours to play straight through? 50 hours to play every branching mission? To bring it back to Wing Commander: knowing the game today, I can finish the Vega campaign in about two hours. But in 1990, when Wing Commander was new, that took me at least a month of hard-fought battles. So if somebody asks me how long it takes to play Wing Commander, what do I say? There's a reason they don't put those kinds of estimates on box copy. :)

I will say - Squadron 42 is not any smaller than it was the day we set out to make it. Content isn't being cut or subdivided or parceled out for extra revenue or anything like that. If we mentioned 20 hours in one interview and 50 in another it's because someone was having two different thoughts about the same amount of content... it's in no way indicating that we've removed anything from the initial pitch, because we absolutely haven't.
Reference
By all means please respond with your own counter arguments, provided they aren't just some rhetoric-fueled mess.
 
In regards to the single player and it's content:

Reference

Reference
By all means please respond with your own counter arguments, provided they aren't just some rhetoric-fueled mess.

Thanks for this. I had a feeling it was nonsense. I've noticed that game developers typically hate defining their games in terms of hours of gameplay, I don't see why they would be any different. Game times vary from person to person and during development.

That 50h thing seemed excessive, especially in light of the original funding projections.
 
The sandbox part of the game already exists. It's not like all we have is a few pretty screenshots.

I should of specified I was talking about living up to the hype for me personally. Not many games live up to all they hype when I get my hands on them. In this specific case I am not big into multiplayer so all that stuff does nothing for me. The single player campaign has my interest though.
 
That's a lot of money. They're not making their own game engine, and that's most of the impressiveness I've seen in the footage ('Oh it looks really good' -> 'It's CryEngine, and doesn't look that much better than what we've seen CryEngine produce'), so I'm not quite sure where all of that money is going.

Welp, hopefully it's fun for the people who backed.
 
People have already countered this argument with the different ships, different roles aspect. (Somebody with a $350 Crucible repair ship isn't going to even compete with people doing combat, exploration, trading, FPS, etc.)

In addition to that, there's also the crew factor. Bigger ships by and large require more crew to efficiently run them. Using AI crew will only get you so far (and you have to pay the AI anyhow). So these big ships need both people to own them, and people to help run them. Not everybody is going to be out there running them solo due to the logistics issues. Thus this "advantage" filters down to multiple people that otherwise wouldn't have access to those ships.

Case in point, I along with a couple others in the Neogaf organization own an Idris. That's a $1250 combat focused capital ship which should give us a "huge starting advantage" going by it being one of the most expensive ships in the game. Realistically, however, they're going to require the aid from other members of the organization. Others that don't own one. Thus our "advantage" filters down and empowers that guy who has an Aurora starter package and wants to give crewing a capital ship a try. The biggest spenders also have more ships than they can realistically use at once, so some of those ships will become "loaner" ships to other org mates.

This is a social game with group play dynamics. Power and advantages come more from who you know and connect with than they do from what you own individually. While you're free to play as a lone wolf, constantly comparing yourself to everybody else and competing with them, you'll always be at a disadvantage when confronted with a group.

That's a first -- a trickle-down economics argument about a video game? I'm sorry but I don't find that at all convincing.

Speaking for myself, I've no particular wish for the game to fail, and I'm well aware that it's in development, alphas are up and running, single-player stuff is coming, etc.

But for me, I categorically refuse to support a game making tens of millions off the back of selling virtual in-game items for real money like this. I find it distasteful and won't support it with my money.
 
damn the new alpha looks incredible.

Should I be slightly concerned that they keep saying that their spending is based on their incoming money? Surely the incoming money will start to slow? I know they are still making lots, but it seems like at the current rate of release the dev will need another 5 years of funding! Do people think if funding slowed they'd be able to finish it on the money they've already made?

Still, exciting stuff so far.
 
That's a first -- a trickle-down economics argument about a video game? I'm sorry but I don't find that at all convincing

I don't see how this applies here. His point was that if someone buys a 10 seat ship, they still need 9 bodies to run it. That very obviously creates a place for less bought in players to be a part of the big capital ships without having to spend the money to purchase them OR for 10 players to combine their incomes to make that big purchase.

That's not theoretical, it's just self evident.
 
That's a lot of money. They're not making their own game engine, and that's most of the impressiveness I've seen in the footage ('Oh it looks really good' -> 'It's CryEngine, and doesn't look that much better than what we've seen CryEngine produce'), so I'm not quite sure where all of that money is going.

Welp, hopefully it's fun for the people who backed.

Yeah all the meshes, models, textures, animations, flight models, physics, world design, game design, writing, cutscenes..all part of cryengine package, what the fuck are they doing ? They should have released the game 3 years ago when they licensed the engine!
 
damn the new alpha looks incredible.

Should I be slightly concerned that they keep saying that their spending is based on their incoming money? Surely the incoming money will start to slow? I know they are still making lots, but it seems like at the current rate of release the dev will need another 5 years of funding! Do people think if funding slowed they'd be able to finish it on the money they've already made?

Still, exciting stuff so far.

They stated multiple times that they have enough money stashed that if funding ended today, they would be able to finish the game.
Also, they do not need another 5 years. Two years is max they need to finish Star Citizen 1.0 and thats probably more time than they are expecting.
 
damn the new alpha looks incredible.

Should I be slightly concerned that they keep saying that their spending is based on their incoming money? Surely the incoming money will start to slow? I know they are still making lots, but it seems like at the current rate of release the dev will need another 5 years of funding! Do people think if funding slowed they'd be able to finish it on the money they've already made?

Still, exciting stuff so far.

Their comments were that they were developing with the expectation that they would hit $100m in crowd funding by the time Star Citizen launches; they've hit $100m while major parts of the game are still pre-alpha.
I can't see much cause for concern.
Also, for the years that have passed so far funding hasn't slowed. Take a look at the funding tracker - since this thread's creation another $90k has been pledged to the game.
Nothing stops this train. Choo choo! ^_^
 
Great story from Crusader PU from one of our gaffers :)
If You dont know why so many of us are excited for Star Citizen part of the game, this story should clear it up mostly.
-----
Finally had my "Holy shit, this is it. This is the game I've been waiting for." moment, even if it was only a tiny sliver of what's to come.

Remember to press f12 and bring up the chat window people! This wouldnt have happened without being a little bit social.

Was in my Gladius, decided to go fix a comm array. Run into pirates attacking the station, help clear them out, park my Gladius, EVA into the station and fix it. While floating back into the ship, a guy at Port Olisar wants to know if anyone has a multicrew ship to have fun in.

I volunteer to use my Connie, quantum drive back to the port, spawn it, get the guy inside. Never met before, but we're instant buddies. Not sure what we're going to do, we follow another Constellation leaving the port. In the weapons free zone, all hell breaks out as their gunner starts shooting at us.

Ensuing battle between two constellations with another Hornet and Mustang who joined in for fun. Somehow both Constellations survive (badly damaged), call a truce. Mustang was the only casualty (lol). Hornet pilot asks if he can join us, of course! He's abandons his ship, floats across to ours, gets in, starts taking care of shields.

We gotta get repaired, lights sparkling everywhere, water(?!) pipes spraying water everywhere, darkness inside the Connie besides the blue lights flashing on the floor directing you to exits.

We quantum jump to the Cry-Astro repair station. Land, drones do their work and ship is restocked and repaired. On slowly exiting the platform (which is sandwiched top and bottom by the station so you gotta go slow), we start receiving fire. Player Cutlass Black.

Shit is going down, one of our guys gets clipped out of the ship and floats back to the repair platform. He says he's seeing an epic fight. Both of these manned mutlicrew ships going at it: missiles and flares and chaff everywhere, laser lighting up the dark void. I've lost the missile racks to dmg, and this cutlass is going full ram mode. He's going to take down everyone, his crew and himself included.

His last charge at us, and we unload everything we got. Right before impact, the Cutlass blows up in an awesome explosion that we run right through, taking some debris dmg along the way.

Ship controls like a greased watermelon. Luckily we're close by to the repairs, and I barely manage to land the ship without taking us out. Another guy observing in a Ghost Hornet, who my radars never picked up, wants to join in. As I let my ship float in space to let the guy EVA in, we all have a dance party inside. He's in, we're all high fiving, and then sparks and rattling begin with a fury.

The Cutlass returned.

I let everyone else man the ship, letting the first guy I met pilot. I want to see the damage while I'm walking inside. The crew isn't able to start up the Connie in time. The Cutlass must've unloaded all his missiles after the shields went down because all of a sudden a huge massive explosion as the ship rips apart all around me in fire and debris.

My crew has died, yet I'm still alive because I guess I was just running around inside and not sitting down. As the debris of my Constellation floats away, I see the Cutlass blow up the Ghost next to me. He flies away, and I'm left floating in space.

I suicide, revive back at Port Olisar, and while I'm adding the crew to the friend's list the game crashes.

The PTU was a mess for me, could barely play long and when I did you would see the FPS drops happening or blocking bugs. This public release is so much better so far.

Total playtime was around 40 minutes. Gonna remember that for a long time. Wish I'd recorded it. I never write this much on GAF, but I wanted to share the experience so bad.

Totally a believer now.
 
But what I mean is, will it all come together in the end to create one big congruent AAAAAA experience, or will it end up being segregated moments of genius that will be stitched together through sloppy execution?

The alpha product is already AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA caliber graphics-wise and much better than that gameplaywise.
 
Here's me with the Steam controller (using the gyro for aiming): https://youtu.be/ncmef-5ebO4
It's interesting to see the difference in playstyles. I'm using the same ship with heavier fixed weapons.

If there's one thing about the clip that sticks out it's the repetitive gun fire sound. Hope it gets improved, such as giving the blasts some slight variance and more natural sounding spacial positioning given how often it will be used. Rest of the sound design shaping up really well.
 
That's a lot of money. They're not making their own game engine, and that's most of the impressiveness I've seen in the footage ('Oh it looks really good' -> 'It's CryEngine, and doesn't look that much better than what we've seen CryEngine produce'), so I'm not quite sure where all of that money is going.

Welp, hopefully it's fun for the people who backed.

Just, like, maybe try to get half a clue before just spouting such BS?

CryEngine isn't fucking magic, it just has the ability to host it. The graphical fidelity showcased by this game is based on a hell of a lot of hard work by hundreds of talented developers.

God. It's like moths to a flame with any and every Star Citizen thread.
 
Well i didnt know much about this game but after reading this thread, the hate and more importantly the enthusiasm for it made me check it out more.

Just dropped £100 on the game and a ship.
 
Just, like, maybe try to get half a clue before just spouting such BS?

CryEngine isn't fucking magic, it just has the ability to host it. The graphical fidelity showcased by this game is based on a hell of a lot of hard work by hundreds of talented developers.

God. It's like moths to a flame with any and every Star Citizen thread.

I'm willing to give people a break. The opinion is damn stupid but there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what engines do for a game. This opinion is just as stupid as those claiming it is magic that Fox Engine can do MGSV at 60hz on consoles.
 
That's a first -- a trickle-down economics argument about a video game? I'm sorry but I don't find that at all convincing.

Speaking for myself, I've no particular wish for the game to fail, and I'm well aware that it's in development, alphas are up and running, single-player stuff is coming, etc.

But for me, I categorically refuse to support a game making tens of millions off the back of selling virtual in-game items for real money like this. I find it distasteful and won't support it with my money.
Whether you're convinced or not has no bearing on reality. Larger ships will require multiple people to work at their full capacity. A person is not more powerful by simple ownership of one. By themselves they're running in gimped mode. Thus the power gets distributed as they crew up. There's already people experiencing this in the current PU by joining up with others in the multi-crew ships that are already implemented. A Constellation or Retaliator flying by itself isn't nearly as capable as a fully crewed one. And those are small ships all things considered. An Idris, for example, is multiple times larger and has its own hangar. You'll need many more people to run it, and even more still for the internal fighter squad.

Mind you, there are some fairly expensive ships that can be effectively run by one person, but they're more the exception than the rule. Even in those cases, they'll still be beaten by a multi-crew ship that's in the same category. The game truly is set up for a "us" vs "them" and not a "me" vs "you". Worrying about how X player has an unfair advantage is pointless when it's really going to be X player's group. And if you hate X player's group so much, then join another group to oppose them. There's enough money dumped in the game at this point that finding a well equipped organization isn't hard.

Also, I do have more ships than I can use, and I will be offering them to org mates to borrow when the permission systems are in place. This isn't theory, but fact. (So long as the project doesn't implode at least.) So there's going to be people out in the game with "unfair" advantages day one that haven't spent a dime more than a starter package.

As for you not spending your money because they're selling digital items, that's obviously your call. In an ideal world they wouldn't need to sell ships. In an ideal world, however, we'd already have a game like SC. Back in the real world you can't run purely on ideals. To make the game they need money. To get the money they have to offer something for people to part with it. People aren't going to be as willing to donate money without something to show in return. Then it's just a matter of making sure that the something they get isn't game breaking. In this case they get away with it because everything for sale is available in game, and the game itself is skewed towards group play.
 
If there's one thing about the clip that sticks out it's the repetitive gun fire sound. Hope it gets improved, such as giving the blasts some slight variance and more natural sounding spacial positioning given how often it will be used. Rest of the sound design shaping up really well.

Yeah, the laser zaps do have a placeholder feel to them. They could vary the sound slightly with heat level, for example.
 
Well i didnt know much about this game but after reading this thread, the hate and more importantly the enthusiasm for it made me check it out more.

Just dropped £100 on the game and a ship.

That's how it starts, You'd do best to hide your wallet during new ship sales
 
Would you mind to share the controller config? I was thinking to try the game with it, and it would be pretty good as a quickstart or to blatantly steal some ideas :P

Sure, here you go: http://pastebin.com/Zv0DWJbE
I haven't made full use of the newer features yet, so lots of room for improvement.

Map your left stick to your left/right and up/down strafe and unbind the left stick from pitch/yaw. At the start of flight, hit right alt+M and then ctrl+C to change to the mode you see in the video. (that's what I'm doing in the first few seconds)

I set the throttle to zero and just use the right/left analog triggers as my front/back strafe. When fully pressed, the right trigger sends up arrow which I've mapped to afterburner. Q and E on the grip triggers are the roll inputs.

The right pad sends mouse input in trackball mode, and if you're touching the pad then the gyro will also send mouse input.

Try setting the edge spin radius and edge spin speed in the advanced trackball settings to get an easy way to do long fast turns without needing to reposition. I like it better off. To turn, I usually flick the trackpad to use the low friction spin, then put my thumb back on to engage the gyro and tilt the controller to aim.
 
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