Star Citizen: Believe it or not, its a real (amazing) game

[Exposure]

It's always kinda weird how much a lot of the positivity arguments really hinges on the technical aspects being super impressive when all I wanted was just the Freelancer 2.0 I was promised years and years ago instead of the ultimate universe simulator Chris Roberts has managed to scope creep himself into.

Like someone mentioned in the other thread this is in response to as to how basic sounding stuff re: online infrastructure gets a bunch of marketing stuff attached to it , and I actually will slightly defend SC there because like

trying to accomplish a basic thing when you're also doing way too much complex systems at the same time is actually an ambitious goal just in terms of "you basically have to figure out how to actually do this thing everybody cheats around normally because of how absurdly expensive the requirements involved are"

it's just

you know

half the reason cheating gets involved is because a lot of the time you do not in fact, actually need the full simulation and that's the thing that just keeps coming to mind whenever people push those videos about it when they're not from places that specifically focus on the tech stuff

that what's going in my head everytime is something like "sure [system] sounds neat on a technical level, but does the game actually need to try doing half of this in terms of actual gameplay features?" Like it's cool that people can make their own fun in the tech demo sandbox they're in because of what's in it currently but

again

I just wanted Freelancer 2.0

everything about SC so far is that I'm not going get Freelancer 2.0 for at least several more years because Chris Roberts physically cannot stop himself from promising more shit

 

[falcondoc]

I see nothing that sounds like sounds like innovative or emergent gameplay in that OP

 

[Jedi2016]

That's all fine. Wake me up when I can buy the complete game on Steam for $60 and never have to worry about dropping another dime.

 

[TheChrisGlass]

Also Also disclaimer: YES. It is in Alpha.

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And that doesn't set alarm bells off? From 2013?

 

[TheJollyCorner]

The discourse, at least on forums outside of whatever SC boards/forums, is kind of impossible now though, isn't it?
If you come and talk about all the positives, after this insane development, the stigma is 'WHALE' though. Right?

I feel like a place like this can legitimately never have a civil conversation about this 'game' until* it releases in whatever kind of retail form. It just can't happen. Every time a Star Citizen thread pops up it's the equivalent of people walking into a bar/pub and throwing haymakers even before they can get a drink.
And my own understanding, as someone with no skin in the game, is WHY that can't happen and agreeing with those that say the entire project is, at worst, a scam and at best an over-promised mess that will never live up to the ambitions.

 

[Bufbaf]

I think that a lot of people here struggle with the notion that these two truths can coexist :

1) People managing the project have seen that a certain percentage of the community are effectively an infinite source of money, and will continue to take their $ for as long as they'll be willing to part with them. Combine this with the fact that if no one can say no to Chris Roberts at some point, he will keep adding stuff and never complete his game (see the story of Freelancer's development), and you'll understand that SC is unlikely to ever be released as a complete game. It will continue development until the well of money dries up, and by then it will be an incomplete Frankenstein's monster of a game made of innumerable half baked (or overcooked) systems loosely patched together.

2) SC started out as a genuine game project, is still being worked on by many people that are undoubtedly passionate about what they do, it currently offers gameplay that has some value (albeit being incomplete), and has made multiple technological achievements that are not found in any other game so far.

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I mean, sure, at least in parts, but a lot of people just seem to either forget or willfully ignore that a ton of players have a huge amount of fun with this game. And equally many players do legitimately love how crazy new stuff is added constantly.

Look at Elite, which I still play on and off, if you want to see a "Frankenstein". They advertised their "space legs" (walking outside of ships) for ages, now it's in, and it's laughably disappointing, disconnected, pointless and just bad. Every second you are completely aware that it's just a mismatched addon to everything else in the game, and they did themselves a huge disservice by adding it, I feel like.

I can only speak for myself for sure, but I'm absolutely interested because there's so much absolutely crazy and immersive stuff added constantly, going by what I researched. Stuff like atmosphere that affects spacecrafts as soon as they enter it. Stuff like storms and believable biomes on planets. Stuff like walking around realistic stations, buying shit, preparing backpacks for different situations, exploring caves and whatnot.

If SC would "just" be the pretty Wing Commander some people would want it to be, I would have absolutely no interest in the game. Yes, it seems to constantly fight with bugs, and yes, it's clearly still not a finished game, but what is there, and what is being added with every update is super exciting, and there are lots and lots of people being there for it. Hell, the amount of specifically popular or hobbyist Elite veterans and creators stopping their grind because they are so thoroughly impressed by what SC offers instead is - in my opinion - speaking volumes alone.

 

[ChrisD]

I think, if this game wasn't saddled with the scummy business practices, it actually would be enjoyed by many just with what exists already. But, unless your interest was already piqued or someone into the game already gets you in, everything *surrounding* the game is just.. not good.

 

[L Thammy]

I don't pay that much attention to Star Citizen, but I appreciate that there's a wide range between "this is a scam wherein your money is taken and you get absolutely nothing" and "this is a well managed product with a reasonable scope for the resources they have and are able to handle under a sensible time frame and budget".

 

[Ravio-li]

The attention to detail impresses but the graphical quality doesn't, certainly not in the way it did back when they first started hawking the project to people in 2012. And they're still literal years from anything resembling a full release. Star Citizen will look like everything else or maybe a bit outdated by the time it approaches a 1.0 version.

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Tbf it also improves it's visual quality alongside everyone else. Check out a few older videos from the 2.0 days.

The game is mechanically broken though and I'm super pessimistic that it will ever change. Ok not true, it does change but veeeery slowly. I'm also always at a loss for words if I read how simulated everything is or mechanically in depth. Like.. have I played a different game?

- 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.

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This for example. I know the flight model has changed/improved a bit not too long ago. But before that you could just park your ship in mid air, upside down without it falling down. Cool thruster simulation. Ok, maybe that has changed recently and my complaint is outdated, haven't tried that out again last freeflight.

Or the ship that won a racing competition a while ago was the one where the wings were broken off (cause you can go tighter curves without them and there was no downside)

Or the NPC's, that are either broken and do nothing but t-posing or IF they work they just walk in loops. No great AI in sight.

lol. Only someone that is absolutely clueless as to what is going on underneath the hood of this game would say something like this. 10 years ago there was nothing coming even remotely close to the levels of simulation SC was aiming for (and currently reaching), and there is still nothing close today. History dictates that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.



Seriously. Talk shit about this games monetization/fundraising all you want, but what the devs are achieving with the actual game right now is next level.

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That video describes a bunch of stuff that IS NOT IN THE GAME. And it's unclear how far they are with it, because CIG has a track record of lying about their progress. SQ42 was multiple times in the "almost done" phase. Features like Salvage have become a joke because they are always pushed back. And Server Meshing is always 1-2 years away.

Feels like SC works if you use it as a place to hang out with other people and maybe roleplaying. It's also really good at providing just enough quiet time to feel very immersive at times. Approaching stations or planets, asking for a landing pad and landing looks, sounds and feels great.

 

[Exposure]

If SC would "just" be the pretty Wing Commander some people would want it to be, I would have absolutely no interest in the game.

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I mean, that's not surprising because what SC is at this point is incredibly divorced from what it's originally pitched as

like I'm just looking at this part:

Stuff like walking around realistic stations, buying shit, preparing backpacks for different situations, exploring caves and whatnot.

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Like it's not even just how it's not that related to arcade space sim pitch, we're just straight up losing the arcade part because needing to do shit like "yeah you gotta buy seperate backpacks and prepare them properly for whatever very specific amount of situations you can do on a given planet" is a sentence I would expect to read in a review of a survival sim game, not a game that was pitched to me as being a Wing Commander/Freelancer successor

like I'm just sitting here thinking "man the scope creep's gotten out of control but admittedly I can't think of how else Chris Roberts can push it" and then I just get this sledgehammer of a reveal of "he went what if it had survival sim stuff though"

I'm actually just straight up malding, because I know whenever Star Citizen gets this kind of stuff, it also affects Squadron 42 so I guess I know what popular game to blame when we finally get another Squadron 42 preview and now there's an entire survival on an alien planet segment bolted on to the campaign now

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Hell, the amount of specifically popular or hobbyist Elite veterans and creators stopping their grind because they are so thoroughly impressed by what SC offers instead is - in my opinion - speaking volumes alone.

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Who are you referring to?

 

[BearPawB]

Everytime I've tried playing its run so poorly I immediately uninstalled it

 

[Munti]

I barely know anything about SC (except that it's in development for many years and it still get crowdfunded and that they sell very expensive digital space ships and that it's controvers because it gets asumed that it's a scam that will not be published as a polished product) but I watched the videos in your post, OP, and I'm actually super impressed.
The simulation of space and air travelling with space ships look incredibly convincing, Entering/exiting the atmosphere looks cool and the stratossphere looks beautiful.

 

[En-ou]

I remember when this game used to look so unfathomably "next-gen".

Looking at these videos, it looks like the rest of the industry has caught up. It's visuals don't really stand out any more.

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6 more fiscals and stretch goal of 300M to start the port to unreal 5.

 

[psionotic]

I've long been a skeptic, but am glad you and others are enjoying it, OP. It's healthy to see the other side of the argument sometimes.

 

[Firefly]

I feel like no matter how many videos of this game I see I have no idea what is going on or what this "game" is supposed to be. Bunch of people goofing around with the jankiness and the visuals don't look impressive at all.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

It still looks a bit jank, and has framerate problems in basically every video i've seen. The initial pitch seemed really interesting but that was like 10 yrs ago.

 

[Bufbaf]

Like it's not even just how it's not that related to arcade space sim pitch, we're just straight up losing the arcade part because needing to do shit like "yeah you gotta buy seperate backpacks and prepare them properly for whatever very specific amount of situations you can do on a given planet"

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I'm sorry, that's was easy to misinterpret: you don't have to do that. You can though, which i think is cool.

Who are you referring to?

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Search YouTube with keywords like "elite star citizen" and you'll find a bunch immediately. I don't remember the names, but even i remember a specific black-haired girl and a beardy guy from back when I was looking up Elite videos. If you're into those I'm sure you'll recognize them.

 

[Deleted member 12323]

I don't like their practices and it doesn't feel like a game

 

[HylianSeven]

Cool you're having fun. That's all that matters in the end. SC at the moment is a lot like the really early days of Sea of Thieves. Very rough experience, mostly made up for by the community making lemonade out of lemons. And unfortunately, stuck in those "early days" for what look like years to come, with nothing that persists beyond the next alpha update.

In this case, a great many lemons are made up for by having fun friends to experience it with and laugh at.

If you're looking for a similar experience with friends, there wasn't much you mentioned here that you can't do in Elite Dangerous with a wing. Invade planetary bases? Check. Steal cargo from unsuspecting players with not enough firepower to stop you as you become public enemy #1? Check. Stressfully run a blockade while trying to be invisible to radar with a bunch of high-value cargo that you spent the last 6 hours farming on your way to becoming a wealthy trader? Check. Fight massive alien ships with your friends in the gunner seat in your ship or in the own ships as part of your wing? Check. Take your wing into combat with or against other wings just for the thrill of combat or to protect other ships? Check. Join a wing that goes out saving ships that have run out of fuel? Check. Buy a ship carrier and jump out around Sagittarius A* with your friends to start a new life as a ________? Yep, why not. Elite has tens of thousands of inhabited worlds and billions of planets you can land on, explore, mine, discover, or simply enjoy the view on.

And all of these give you the same kinds of crazy stories to tell. And you get to keep everything you make, capture or kill. Because it's a complete game.

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This. Despite the issues with Odyssey (the space legs expansion), it's still a complete game. I haven't tried Odyssey in quite some time though so I am unsure how it is these days. However the rest of Elite is a complete game. I won't deny SC has it's perks, but it's still remaining unfinished.

 

[krakenking189]

I'm glad your enjoying it, it can be a special game. Hopefully Squadron 42 will show some progress in the next year or I may need to make my own Wing Commander lol

 

[Nairume]

Who are you referring to?

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Yeah, I see this claim brought up all the time, and it's usually just vague references to a larger trend based on a few youtubers.

 

[D O T]

Yessss yeeeessss let's hype this game so people keep buying the jpeg ships, so then the dev cycle never ends.

Keep hyping them up with shiny graphics, yesss, look at these videos and all the fun i've had, yesss

 

[Nairume]

Search YouTube with keywords like "elite star citizen" and you'll find a bunch immediately. I don't remember the names, but even i remember a specific black-haired girl and a beardy guy from back when I was looking up Elite videos. If you're

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Doing this exact search brought up only three videos like this in the first twenty hits that showed for me, and two were from the same person. It could be sone of the more general comparison videos end up on the side of SC, but it is a far cry from immediately finding a bunch.

 

[Ausroachman]

I've always had a passing interest in star citizen, from its initial kickstarter right through to the most recent updates. Huge fan of space sims and the tech they show off is really impressive.

As a console player it's never a game I will play, as a tech showcase its still really impressive, if they can iron out the gameplay systems it could be really special.

It seems to have a really hardcore but friendly community as well.

 

[Deleted member 27751]

I just don't see the significant gameplay impacts that Chris Roberts and crew claim are unique to only Star Citizen. Everything that has been mentioned in the OP is something I have experienced in other sim games like DayZ mod or even GTA 5. Player versus player interaction seems to be the driving point of "unique" situations in OP's retelling, and that to me says the actual systems are underdeveloped or lacking if it's the ONLY way in which fun can be had.

Someone mentioned Sea of Thieves in early release, and to me that is exactly what these situations sounds like. Players driving the narrative is all fine and dandy, but when it becomes apparent that the systems rely on that interaction in order to churn out gameplay moments, then you clearly don't have a solid gameplay loop. Heck, I know it was tongue-in-cheek but an event being officially created from a bug that now serves as a player-to-player interactive moment is very barebones. Surely developers would have thought of those kinds of situations already in a space sim reliant on said player interactions?

Don't get me wrong, the game in its alpha development phase seems fun, but it always screams of "half finished systems reliant on player interaction bandaids." That isn't good development scheduling and prioritising. That's just straight up feature creep leaving systems half finished and requiring players to fill the gap.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

The motion tracked face in the third video is nightmare fuel, though..

 

[Muji]

i would buy this - but i don't want to reward the devs for their business model. would it be cool to get the base version in your guys opinions or just boycot completely

 

[just_myles]

Game looks fucking cool. If it gets anywhere near completion I would love to try it out.

 

[finaljedi]

It's always kinda weird how much a lot of the positivity arguments really hinges on the technical aspects being super impressive when all I wanted was just the Freelancer 2.0 I was promised years and years ago instead of the ultimate universe simulator Chris Roberts has managed to scope creep himself into.

Like someone mentioned in the other thread this is in response to as to how basic sounding stuff re: online infrastructure gets a bunch of marketing stuff attached to it , and I actually will slightly defend SC there because like

trying to accomplish a basic thing when you're also doing way too much complex systems at the same time is actually an ambitious goal just in terms of "you basically have to figure out how to actually do this thing everybody cheats around normally because of how absurdly expensive the requirements involved are"

it's just

you know

half the reason cheating gets involved is because a lot of the time you do not in fact, actually need the full simulation and that's the thing that just keeps coming to mind whenever people push those videos about it when they're not from places that specifically focus on the tech stuff

that what's going in my head everytime is something like "sure [system] sounds neat on a technical level, but does the game actually need to try doing half of this in terms of actual gameplay features?" Like it's cool that people can make their own fun in the tech demo sandbox they're in because of what's in it currently but

again

I just wanted Freelancer 2.0

everything about SC so far is that I'm not going get Freelancer 2.0 for at least several more years because Chris Roberts physically cannot stop himself from promising more shit

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Pretty much this. The persistent world stuff with its highly advanced AI for bartenders and dockworkers or whatever never really interested me a whole lot. Why not at least get the narrative game out while you're working on adding whatever new pie in the sky full sim idea that comes into their heads? I'd love another Freelancer style game with the cast they mocapped a few years back, but Squadron 42 doesn't have a release timetable other than before Star Citizen which is still years off.

Their updates are never terribly helpful, you get a pile of stuff where they talk about work on some new feature or some incremental update about something or another without ever really providing perspective on what several months of updates means for the whole project. They can't even provide a ballpark on when a linear campaign is going to be finished...

 

[A Grizzly Bear]

i would buy this - but i don't want to reward the devs for their business model. would it be cool to get the base version in your guys opinions or just boycot completely

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The game is a complicated, interesting mess when you remove both the positive and negative extremes from the discourse.

Despite what some posters here say I was neither scammed nor did I join a pyramid scheme. I was also able to launch and play the game despite it being vapourware and I wasn't so hyped that I lost my house buying all of the jpeg ships.

 

[Ra]

Star Citizen right now is about "emergent gameplay", creating your own fun in the sandbox. It's cool because there are so few Sci-Fi sandboxes (Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, and...) out there, and none with the fidelity and system depth (janky as it can be) of SC.

But I need an actual goal. I still check in every once in a while, well at least I did when I had an RTX 2080. I guess I should launch it with this 3050 Ti just to see how it goes.

I've only put in $40 so I have nothing to lose at this point, besides more time.

Like it's not even just how it's not that related to arcade space sim pitch, we're just straight up losing the arcade part because needing to do shit like "yeah you gotta buy seperate backpacks and prepare them properly for whatever very specific amount of situations you can do on a given planet" is a sentence I would expect to read in a review of a survival sim game, not a game that was pitched to me as being a Wing Commander/Freelancer successor

like I'm just sitting here thinking "man the scope creep's gotten out of control but admittedly I can't think of how else Chris Roberts can push it" and then I just get this sledgehammer of a reveal of "he went what if it had survival sim stuff though"

I'm actually just straight up malding, because I know whenever Star Citizen gets this kind of stuff, it also affects Squadron 42 so I guess I know what popular game to blame when we finally get another Squadron 42 preview and now there's an entire survival on an alien planet segment bolted on to the campaign now

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As someone who backed the game on the promise of the new age Wing Commander, I completely feel your frustrations.

Chris completely lost himself in promising the universe with this multiplayer game. It's crazy because mismanagement is literally what previously got him kicked out of having a lead position in the video game industry. How does he come back decades later and create this monstrosity of a production?

People who call this a scam are stupid and move the discussion nowhere, when this is a monumental lesson in the head of a studio being out of control and there being no one who can tell them they are fucking up.

 

[Nairume]

People who call this a scam are stupid and move the discussion nowhere,

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I don't feel like calling people stupid for finding the project to be a scam is remotely appropriate nor fair. As someone who genuinely believed in the project at the start and still think that some of the creatives (maybe even Chris himself at some point) believed they were doing what was promised, I can't shake all the idea of there being some truth to the claims of there being some level of scam going on with all the smoke that is undeniably there, between the MLM-esque referral campaign that was thankfully pulled, weird attempts to get more money off whales like that sausage dinner, the convenient feature creep, the constantly changing narrative about the game's development, and so on. I want this project to be just a genuine failing of management, but it does feel like there is some stuff going on that points signs to CIG not entirely acting in good faith to its customers.

Does that make me stupid?

 

[Craazy]

It seems right up my alley, but getting into it would require me to buy a new hotas and probably upgrade my PC.

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I bought a Hosas and upgraded my PC. It does seem to have that effect.

 

[RoastBeeph]

The description of what you did in this game doesn't really sound much like a game at all. I am confused, what was so great about you grabbing boxes of drugs?

 

[Neiteio]

Great writeup. I don't plan to play this game (just not a PC gamer at the moment), but it's nice to hear they've already created such a detailed and layered experience.

 

[Ra]

I don't feel like calling people stupid for finding the project to be a scam is remotely appropriate nor fair. As someone who genuinely believed in the project at the start and still think that some of the creatives (maybe even Chris himself at some point) believed they were doing what was promised, I can't shake all the idea of there being some truth to the claims of there being some level of scam going on with all the smoke that is undeniably there, between the MLM-esque referral campaign that was thankfully pulled, weird attempts to get more money off whales like that sausage dinner, the convenient feature creep, the constantly changing narrative about the game's development, and so on.

Does that make me stupid?

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Do you feel stupid? I meant to say "being stupid", and I'm referring to those who stop by every SC thread to call it a pyramid scheme them move on to the next to do it again.

Let's talk money. What kind of scam supports the payroll of nearly a thousand developers? They are burning through the money being brought in as fast as they make it. Tens of millions of dollars a year in payroll. They also have outside investors who are for sure seeing detailed financial reports. Unless they are cooking the books Chris and his wife aren't taking all of the money for themselves.

In light of all that, yeah calling it a scam when it's so obviously a game in active development hell is kinda dumb.

 

[Nooblet]

I agree with all
But the biggest problem playing this right now has been the performance.

I've given the game several tries when I owned a GTX780, then again when I had a GTX 1080, and now I have an RTX 3080 with an upgraded 5900x. And throughout all these years my experience has almost always been a consistent 20FPS (unless I catch the server in a very quite time).

Basically the performance has always been dogshite, and I know server meshing is supposedly coming this year but I donno how much that will affect performance.

Basically it's fun to play, but you can't really play it properly most of the time due to the performance.



Edit: Btw one of the mind-blowing things about the game is that the planets, star system etc have a basic orbital mechanics in place. So they physically move around the game world, and from what I understand the day night cycle in the game is directly tied to the rotation of the planet itself. And there's no "skyboxes" what you see is basically mathematical result of atmospheric scattering.

Additionally, one of the craziest things is the way they have to manage artificial gravity as well as zero gravity. For instance ships have artificial gravity, but if it gets destroyed there's none. In case of small ships it doesn't seem like a big deal, but for larger ships where parts of it can get destroyed, it could lead to a lot of problems. I'm not 100% sure on whether they are still going this route or just gave up and went with an "on/off" modifier for gravity on a ship (like a gravity generator that can be destroyed) but wouldn't blame them if they did that.

 

[jman2050]

Do you feel stupid? I meant to say "being stupid", and I'm referring to those who stop by every SC thread to call it a pyramid scheme them move on to the next to do it again.

Let's talk money. What kind of scam supports the payroll of nearly a thousand developers? They are burning through the money being brought in as fast as they make it. Tens of millions of dollars a year in payroll. They also have outside investors who are for sure seeing detailed financial reports. Unless they are cooking the books Chris and his wife aren't taking all of the money for themselves.

In light of all that, yeah calling it a scam when it's so obviously a game in active development hell is kinda dumb.

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You can always look at it from a more cynical perspective, which is that because they are bleeding money on payroll and having to answer to outside investors as of late and because they are obstinately clinging to their severe feature creep that CIG is resorting to more extreme and unscrupulous monetization methods to keep the money rolling. In that context, the project itself isn't an out and out scam but the efforts made to maintain funding in light of massive sunk costs absolutely can be.

Not that I'm saying that's absolutely the case, but it's not quite as simple as saying that because the game sorta exists and is being worked on that there isn't some scummy nonsense going on.

 

[Ware]

So i have played a bit of Star Citizen because I got a starter edition as a gift. At the moment it kind of reminds me of Sea of Thieves before the Tall Tales systems were added. There isnt really meaningful missions or gameplay loops in the game right now, but there are enough systems in there to make moments of emergent gameplay and roleplay fun. Despite that, you are constantly fighting how unoptimized the game is to get the chance to make your own fun.

It additionally doesnt help that their roadmaps never come close to what is actually being added. Items that could address performance, like server meshing, have been delayed year over year for too long now, that it definitely feels as if core things to the game wont come out, but more things that can generate donations.

 

[Desi]

I love all the detail they put into their ships. Makes the walkthrough review vids so entertaining

 

[Outrun]

I just want to play SQ42.

I wish that Roberts served that up first.

 

[CountAntonio]

I hope this game hits a point where they stop adding stuff for awhile and polish what's existing cause it looks impressive.

 

[Netherscourge]

I hear about this realistic tech in SC, but everything I read about can be convincingly simulated using more standard tech without having to wait 10 years to implement it. And some of the stuff sounds like it wouldn't even be that mind-blowing anyway.

Nothing they've shown is game-changing. Yes, it sounds neat to have a game engine that tracks your footstep placement while climbing a set of stairs, but who the hell looks at their footsteps while walking in a game? Why would we need this? Why hold up a game to implement that?

Games like Elite, No Man's Sky and soon Starfield have taken a lot of the hype away from Star Citizen. I still have no idea what they're trying to do with Star Citizen other than sell tech engines to other game developers, like Havok or Frostbite

 

[Heshinsi]

i scrolled through the second video and the "bounty hunting and ship boarding" part caught my eye after watching the expanse. but when they board the ship they have a gun they (almost) don't use because there's seemingly no one aboard the ship until they get to the cockpit and there's just some guy just sitting there not moving that they gun down and then that's mission complete. the video is a few months old but is that pretty standard of what's in the game right now?

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No. Buddies and I knocked out a few 890J (massive luxury yacht) boarding missions yesterday, and we first had to a clear out some boogies in space, and then EVA to the ship's dock to board. There's a counter with around 20 baddies we have to locate and kill, and the damn ship is really, really big lol.

While we were doing our own thing, there was a social event called Jumptown that was ongoing. In our server a player org had full control of the site, and were directing traffic in and out of the base. You had to declare your arrival, wait for them to give you permission to land, pay the fee (extortion payment) they wanted for the drugs, and then they would load up your ship with the drugs you "bought". They even had a member acting as ATC, and even giving out weather updates and everything lol. It was a bit different to the usual everyone fighting at the base or being super friendly.

 

[Merc_]

It's pretty, but it doesn't seem all that impressive to me outside of that. Frankly, I expect more from a game that's been in development going on 10 years now.

 

[Heshinsi]

I hear about this realistic tech in SC, but everything I read about can be convincingly simulated using more standard tech without having to wait 10 years to implement it. And some of the stuff sounds like it wouldn't even be that mind-blowing anyway.

Nothing they've shown is game-changing. Yes, it sounds neat to have a game engine that tracks your footstep placement while climbing a set of stairs, but who the hell looks at their footsteps while walking in a game? Why would we need this? Why hold up a game to implement that?

Games like Elite, No Man's Sky and soon Starfield have taken a lot of the hype away from Star Citizen. I still have no idea what they're trying to do with Star Citizen other than sell tech engines to other game developers, like Havok or Frostbite

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Elite Dangerous hasn't stolen anyone's hype. I've put over a thousand hours into the game, and the Odyssey update last year made me drop the game completely. I've had a far more engaging and fun time in the last few months playing Star Citizen than all of those hours spent on Elite. Quite a few Elite content creators I've been following over the years have also began to switch over as well.

 

[Moebius]

It was a fun game years ago when they added the ship flying. It feels so good, it was just super unoptimized and buggy. I have no doubt the game will be fun when it is completed.

 

[Damaniel]

My issue with the game isn't really about the content - it's the fact that they've raised more than twice as much as the highest budget AAA games ever, and have nothing to show for it other than a vertical slice of a single player mode and a bunch of ship JPEGs. They can't even meet modest deadlines on their roadmap, and fail to do so over and over again. On top of that, they charge more for in-game transactions than almost any other game, for ships that may or may not ever be implemented.

This game will never get done while Chris Roberts is still in charge. I'm surprised anyone would give him money with his track record of feature creep and consistent failure to deliver on time.

 

[Herman The Tosser]

Elite Dangerous hasn't stolen anyone's hype. I've put over a thousand hours into the game, and the Odyssey update last year made me drop the game completely. I've had a far more engaging and fun time in the last few months playing Star Citizen than all of those hours spent on Elite. Quite a few Elite content creators I've been following over the years have also began to switch over as well.

Click to shrink...

You do know Elite released seven years ago, right? That's a hell of a lot of time for a product to go through its updates, expansions and rise and fall in popularity.

It was announced, made and released seven years ago as a full, finished product.