TLDR:
I've been thinking about making this thread for a little while, but my experiences in Star Citizen over the last couple of weeks have pushed me over the edge, so here I am.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: I paid 30USD in the first 24 hours of the campaign all those years ago, so I am a long time supporter of the game HOWEVER, I have played very little of what they have put out until 3.15.1 came out a couple of months ago, as what was there was very barebones and barely held together. I was quite happy to just sit and wait 20 years for this game to eventually become a thing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also disclaimer: Some of their practices could definitely be improved. I dont like that there are some ships you can buy with real money that you can't buy ingame (yet). I feel like if its flyable ingame then it should be purchasable ingame. In terms of their bananas ship prices, it really doesn't matter to me. If people are willing to pay it, why not? And also you can purchase them all (eventually) ingame. Almost all are available right now ingame, so buying with cash is really just a way of supporting the devs.
That having been said, yes its totally valid to feel like they shouldn't be doing any of that at this point in development.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also Also disclaimer: YES. It is in Alpha. YES. It does have some annoying bugs. However, I find the fun I've had more than outweighs the annoyances from bugs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had been watching a lot of videos in the run up to 3.15 and the full progress wipe that was coming along with it. People seemed to be having a really good time with it and I wanted IN, and with everyone getting their ingame progress reset and a bevy of new systems and changes, it seemed like the perfect time to jump in for reals this time. Before I get into StoryTime, let me tell you a little bit about the game:
For a game that is in alpha, and one that most people seem to think doesn't even exist yet, it is DENSE. There are a lot of systems at play, and they are pretty much all very well thought out. Allow me to just break down a portion of the complexities that are live in game right now:
- Each ship is created with the idea that all of its components must have a place, and all must be physically accessible so that they can be replaced and repaired
- Ships aren't just moved through space by translating forwards like in most games, here the thrusters of the ship physically push the ship through space, which means the weight of the ship actually matters, and the aerodynamics of the ship shape matters when in atmosphere. It also means if those thrusters are blown off, flying becomes a lot harder as you can no longer turn or propel yourself properly BUT you can continue to fly if you compensate for it.
- Ships are fully destructable, so wings and panels can get blown off etc, and you can keep flying although obviously it becomes much harder due to the flight mechanics
- Ships have multiple fully interactive screens where you can change power distribution, overclock various components, check your IR emissions levels, and access ship comms
- You can use ship comms to hail other ships or players walking around on planets, wherever they are, and you get a video feed of their face pop up and you can talk to them (if they accept the call) you can also do this at any time from your PDA-like MobiGlass device on your arm. To make that even cooler, the game features FOIP (Face Over IP) which means anyone with a webcam can have full face tracking, and that really shows when you call other players and get a fully tracked face having a conversation with you. Its bananas. Also you can use this to hail a station or planetary landing area and ask for a landing pad to be assigned as well.
- If you can fit a land vehicle or another ship into your ship then you can travel around with extra transport, and it even saves the vehicle in there for next time you spawn your ship.
- there is a huge variety of ships to choose from, from single seater fighters and transport ships, to huge multi-person ships with living quarters, engineering, meeting rooms, bars, all that good stuff!
- Ships are very customizable in terms of loadout, you can change out weapons, missile types, missile racks, shield generators, cooling units, quantum drives, etc etc
These are all just ship specific things that came to mind, but that doesn't even include anything like: The full FPS mechanics including: going prone, combat rolls, peeking around corners, zeroing weapon sights on the fly, customizing your weapon on the fly by looking at it (which looks dope as hell by the way), HEAPS of weapons, and the shooting feel is actually top notch IMO, Also not even talking about the medical gameplay they just added or inventory management which while in progress, looks cool and should be great once the kinks are worked out. ALSO not even getting into the 5 major planets with fully explorable on foot very detailed and immersive areas, and obviously you can also land anywhere on the planet outside of that for mining or exploration or FPS bunker missions, and each planet also had multiple moons to explore as well. OR the localised voice chat which means you can just walk past people and hear them talking to each other, and respond as well (which adds to some of the later shenanigans)
ANYWAY, thats just to give you an idea of the game and it world as it stands right now.
So recently they started a live event called Jumptown 2.0, based on (I believe) a glitch where a drug factory called Jumptown started pumping out drugs for free due, and players found out and it turned into a bloodbath, with people trying to get their share of the gold rush. And so in Jumptown 2.0. every so often, for 6 hours an event goes live, everyone gets a mission saying theres a drug production facility where something is going down, and if you are a good guy (no criminal rating) then you need to get in there and secure as many boxes of drugs as possible and deliver to the authorities. If you are a bad guy (you have some level of criminal rating) then you must secure the drugs and deliver them to a shady station called GRIM HEX (A hive of scum and villany)
This event has given me some of the most dynamic, amazing gameplay I've had in any game ever. This is what happened on my first 3 attempts to hit it, and each time was super different. Here's what went down:
1st attempt: I messaged the global chat and asked whats the status of Jumptown. I got several replies saying it was locked down but they were allowing peaceful civilians to come and partake. So essentially a group of about 5 people had come in and secured the facility with air and ground support, they even had a sniper on the hill incase visitors got out of hand, but they were letting peaceful players to come in and get some drugs while it was safe. After landing I found a guy at the door, fully kitted out and with amazing looking armor on, and I stopped to just admire his loadout before I heard "MOVE ALONG" and just about shat myself. (I had been doing a lot of solo mining on one of Crusader's moons and so was used to silence lol) I managed to go in about 5 times and grab a box, and so felt I should leave before shit hits the fan. I flew to a nearby station and landed, went in and found the admin services and sold my 5 boxes for about 80,000. Which for context is about 4 missions worth of cash! I was very happy with how much I made, and TBH it didn't feel unbalanced to me as at any point someone could come along and start WW3 and I'd get caught in the middle and lose everything, so it was SUPER tense. My heart was beating out of my chest every time I went there.
2nd attempt: I asked the chat and they replied that there are just a few players grabbing boxes and loading their ships. I flew over and landed and sure enough, there was no one here but these 3 friendly players! We would hold the airlock door for each other as we came in, we waited in line for each other to have a turn, and we even let one of the other guys stack boxes outside without taking any. This lasted for about 15 mins. I now had 10 boxes in my ship and was starting to get nervous. It had been peaceful for a while. The next few boxes I kept my eye on the sky, trying to see if I could see a ship incoming so I could run. I had my 15th box, walking back to my ship when I looked up and saw a shape coming in through the atmosphere. It could very well have just been another friendly player, but I wasn't taking any chances, I threw my box into my ship, shut the back door, ran through the cargo room to the bridge, jumped into the pilots seat, fired up engines and got the hell out of there. As I was flying away there was a MASSIVE explosion right behind me! It turns out it was an A2 bomber carrying a MOAB (Mother of all Bombs) which is basically a nuke and will decimate absolutely everything. Also he had some friends as well, as I see laser shots flinging past me, I quickly got out of atmosphere and started spooling my drive.....waiting.....waiting....waiting....GO! I made it out of there just in time! My shields were knocked out and my ship didn't have great armor stats so if they hit me with a big enough missile it would have been curtains for me. I made it to the station and sold it off, this time making about 240,000 which is the most I have ever made in a single transaction lol.
3rd attempt: This time when I asked I heard back "Yep we're all friendly down here" And when I arrived I found a group of friendly civilians that had banded together and decided to form a chain: grabbing boxes from the receptacle, moving them to the lobby, moving them outside and then loading up players ships for them! Most players would just come, get their ship loaded and fly away. The leader of the operation was asking for tips if you felt like it, otherwise their services were free! Once my ship had one load, I flew off and sold it all (another 240,000) and so I sent the leader a 50,000 tip as I figured most people wouldn't, and he was being super nice and managing all these ships coming in and getting loaded up sounded like a logistical nightmare :P But then I decided I would go back and help out. And so I spent the next hour and a half loading boxes into people's ships! It was very rewarding just helping people even just in a video game lol. I only got one 20,000 tip, but I didn't really care. I had already made heaps and being part of a team helping a bunch of random players felt really good.
So yeah, Star Citizen is real, I love it. This is just a small sampling of the fun I've had over the last couple of months. I've only just started to play a bit with friends and family, and thats a whole extra level of fun. I might add another story in this thread if I have the energy for this amount of writing lol. I had an encounter with several bounty hunters and an injured player, and it was like a playable action movie lol
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Disclaimer: I'm not shilling for SC, I don't really care if you buy a bunch of ships. Just check out some gameplay videos and see for yourself!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been thinking about making this thread for a little while, but my experiences in Star Citizen over the last couple of weeks have pushed me over the edge, so here I am.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: I paid 30USD in the first 24 hours of the campaign all those years ago, so I am a long time supporter of the game HOWEVER, I have played very little of what they have put out until 3.15.1 came out a couple of months ago, as what was there was very barebones and barely held together. I was quite happy to just sit and wait 20 years for this game to eventually become a thing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also disclaimer: Some of their practices could definitely be improved. I dont like that there are some ships you can buy with real money that you can't buy ingame (yet). I feel like if its flyable ingame then it should be purchasable ingame. In terms of their bananas ship prices, it really doesn't matter to me. If people are willing to pay it, why not? And also you can purchase them all (eventually) ingame. Almost all are available right now ingame, so buying with cash is really just a way of supporting the devs.
That having been said, yes its totally valid to feel like they shouldn't be doing any of that at this point in development.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also Also disclaimer: YES. It is in Alpha. YES. It does have some annoying bugs. However, I find the fun I've had more than outweighs the annoyances from bugs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had been watching a lot of videos in the run up to 3.15 and the full progress wipe that was coming along with it. People seemed to be having a really good time with it and I wanted IN, and with everyone getting their ingame progress reset and a bevy of new systems and changes, it seemed like the perfect time to jump in for reals this time. Before I get into StoryTime, let me tell you a little bit about the game:
For a game that is in alpha, and one that most people seem to think doesn't even exist yet, it is DENSE. There are a lot of systems at play, and they are pretty much all very well thought out. Allow me to just break down a portion of the complexities that are live in game right now:
- Each ship is created with the idea that all of its components must have a place, and all must be physically accessible so that they can be replaced and repaired
- Ships aren't just moved through space by translating forwards like in most games, here the thrusters of the ship physically push the ship through space, which means the weight of the ship actually matters, and the aerodynamics of the ship shape matters when in atmosphere. It also means if those thrusters are blown off, flying becomes a lot harder as you can no longer turn or propel yourself properly BUT you can continue to fly if you compensate for it.
- Ships are fully destructable, so wings and panels can get blown off etc, and you can keep flying although obviously it becomes much harder due to the flight mechanics
- Ships have multiple fully interactive screens where you can change power distribution, overclock various components, check your IR emissions levels, and access ship comms
- You can use ship comms to hail other ships or players walking around on planets, wherever they are, and you get a video feed of their face pop up and you can talk to them (if they accept the call) you can also do this at any time from your PDA-like MobiGlass device on your arm. To make that even cooler, the game features FOIP (Face Over IP) which means anyone with a webcam can have full face tracking, and that really shows when you call other players and get a fully tracked face having a conversation with you. Its bananas. Also you can use this to hail a station or planetary landing area and ask for a landing pad to be assigned as well.
- If you can fit a land vehicle or another ship into your ship then you can travel around with extra transport, and it even saves the vehicle in there for next time you spawn your ship.
- there is a huge variety of ships to choose from, from single seater fighters and transport ships, to huge multi-person ships with living quarters, engineering, meeting rooms, bars, all that good stuff!
- Ships are very customizable in terms of loadout, you can change out weapons, missile types, missile racks, shield generators, cooling units, quantum drives, etc etc
These are all just ship specific things that came to mind, but that doesn't even include anything like: The full FPS mechanics including: going prone, combat rolls, peeking around corners, zeroing weapon sights on the fly, customizing your weapon on the fly by looking at it (which looks dope as hell by the way), HEAPS of weapons, and the shooting feel is actually top notch IMO, Also not even talking about the medical gameplay they just added or inventory management which while in progress, looks cool and should be great once the kinks are worked out. ALSO not even getting into the 5 major planets with fully explorable on foot very detailed and immersive areas, and obviously you can also land anywhere on the planet outside of that for mining or exploration or FPS bunker missions, and each planet also had multiple moons to explore as well. OR the localised voice chat which means you can just walk past people and hear them talking to each other, and respond as well (which adds to some of the later shenanigans)
ANYWAY, thats just to give you an idea of the game and it world as it stands right now.
So recently they started a live event called Jumptown 2.0, based on (I believe) a glitch where a drug factory called Jumptown started pumping out drugs for free due, and players found out and it turned into a bloodbath, with people trying to get their share of the gold rush. And so in Jumptown 2.0. every so often, for 6 hours an event goes live, everyone gets a mission saying theres a drug production facility where something is going down, and if you are a good guy (no criminal rating) then you need to get in there and secure as many boxes of drugs as possible and deliver to the authorities. If you are a bad guy (you have some level of criminal rating) then you must secure the drugs and deliver them to a shady station called GRIM HEX (A hive of scum and villany)
This event has given me some of the most dynamic, amazing gameplay I've had in any game ever. This is what happened on my first 3 attempts to hit it, and each time was super different. Here's what went down:
1st attempt: I messaged the global chat and asked whats the status of Jumptown. I got several replies saying it was locked down but they were allowing peaceful civilians to come and partake. So essentially a group of about 5 people had come in and secured the facility with air and ground support, they even had a sniper on the hill incase visitors got out of hand, but they were letting peaceful players to come in and get some drugs while it was safe. After landing I found a guy at the door, fully kitted out and with amazing looking armor on, and I stopped to just admire his loadout before I heard "MOVE ALONG" and just about shat myself. (I had been doing a lot of solo mining on one of Crusader's moons and so was used to silence lol) I managed to go in about 5 times and grab a box, and so felt I should leave before shit hits the fan. I flew to a nearby station and landed, went in and found the admin services and sold my 5 boxes for about 80,000. Which for context is about 4 missions worth of cash! I was very happy with how much I made, and TBH it didn't feel unbalanced to me as at any point someone could come along and start WW3 and I'd get caught in the middle and lose everything, so it was SUPER tense. My heart was beating out of my chest every time I went there.
2nd attempt: I asked the chat and they replied that there are just a few players grabbing boxes and loading their ships. I flew over and landed and sure enough, there was no one here but these 3 friendly players! We would hold the airlock door for each other as we came in, we waited in line for each other to have a turn, and we even let one of the other guys stack boxes outside without taking any. This lasted for about 15 mins. I now had 10 boxes in my ship and was starting to get nervous. It had been peaceful for a while. The next few boxes I kept my eye on the sky, trying to see if I could see a ship incoming so I could run. I had my 15th box, walking back to my ship when I looked up and saw a shape coming in through the atmosphere. It could very well have just been another friendly player, but I wasn't taking any chances, I threw my box into my ship, shut the back door, ran through the cargo room to the bridge, jumped into the pilots seat, fired up engines and got the hell out of there. As I was flying away there was a MASSIVE explosion right behind me! It turns out it was an A2 bomber carrying a MOAB (Mother of all Bombs) which is basically a nuke and will decimate absolutely everything. Also he had some friends as well, as I see laser shots flinging past me, I quickly got out of atmosphere and started spooling my drive.....waiting.....waiting....waiting....GO! I made it out of there just in time! My shields were knocked out and my ship didn't have great armor stats so if they hit me with a big enough missile it would have been curtains for me. I made it to the station and sold it off, this time making about 240,000 which is the most I have ever made in a single transaction lol.
3rd attempt: This time when I asked I heard back "Yep we're all friendly down here" And when I arrived I found a group of friendly civilians that had banded together and decided to form a chain: grabbing boxes from the receptacle, moving them to the lobby, moving them outside and then loading up players ships for them! Most players would just come, get their ship loaded and fly away. The leader of the operation was asking for tips if you felt like it, otherwise their services were free! Once my ship had one load, I flew off and sold it all (another 240,000) and so I sent the leader a 50,000 tip as I figured most people wouldn't, and he was being super nice and managing all these ships coming in and getting loaded up sounded like a logistical nightmare :P But then I decided I would go back and help out. And so I spent the next hour and a half loading boxes into people's ships! It was very rewarding just helping people even just in a video game lol. I only got one 20,000 tip, but I didn't really care. I had already made heaps and being part of a team helping a bunch of random players felt really good.
So yeah, Star Citizen is real, I love it. This is just a small sampling of the fun I've had over the last couple of months. I've only just started to play a bit with friends and family, and thats a whole extra level of fun. I might add another story in this thread if I have the energy for this amount of writing lol. I had an encounter with several bounty hunters and an injured player, and it was like a playable action movie lol
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Disclaimer: I'm not shilling for SC, I don't really care if you buy a bunch of ships. Just check out some gameplay videos and see for yourself!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
