Great discussion. Just want to commend them both. Space Tomato for reaching out and bridging the gap in knowledge. LoneVaultWanderer for being open minded, level headed, and insightful as well. Dare I say, we'll see him in the verse? :)
Sounds like a nightmare to have investors pushing for hard deadlines in Star Citizen. I strongly believe this financial model builds a more sustainable and enjoyable workplace, obviously not without issues, but better than publicly traded AAA studios who constantly underdeliver and cut staff to meet quarterly earning goals. I'm glad you touched on melting ships and that they are earnable in game. I asume most people who see that you can buy a pack for 48k and that you've already needed to spend 1k or 10k to do so, would think that 48k is on top of what you've spent already. The concept of melting is quite unique, as a backer from 2014 I didn't learn about it untill this year, and I was baffled there isn't a fee to do so. The reason I didn't know about melting is because I always thought the price of ships was insane, especially with the state of the game. When returning to the game this summer after a long break, the game was surprisingly good, and naturally that changed my percieved value of ships. It is scary how normalized ship prices within the community have gotten over the years, and very understandable that people outside of the community get a negative reaction when they learn about them. My positive takeaway is that the ships in this game are amazing, and that wouldn't be the case if they weren't sold in the way they are.
Glassdoor reviews from former CIG employees, paint the complete opposite picture of what its like working on this game. Citing serious issues with management, and a lack of skilled employees that know how to work on a game this ambitious. Star Citizens development troubles continue because of inexperience devs, and incompetent management. Some of the issues mentioned include hiring people because they invested a lot of money and time into Star Citizen. A terrible combination.
@@omgitsbees You have to take glass door with a grain of salt as anyone can really comment there and only disgruntled employees usually care to post there. Happy employees are still employees. I live near the Austin office and have met several people working there and every one had nothing but good things to say, even after 5-10 years. Between work/life balance, pay, benefits, environment, etc. I don't know about the other offices, of course, but I doubt it varies much since it's the same general culture and management.
I do think this project would have been greatly improved had someone stood there in that conference room and just said "no CR, we aren't adding that." every once in a while. Most feature creep in this game greatly improved the game, no doubt. Some (looking at face recognition, lol), maybe not so much.
If you have outside investor, there is no way they won't start interfering with development of the game. Their goal will most certainly will only revolve around maximizing revenue, that's it.
@@MarcinP2 yeah, it's great now, years after, after lawsuits, after damage to their reputation, imagine of they didn't have to meet investor expectations, and instead aimed to meet gamers expectations
@@Batlafication I remember SC existed before Cyberpunk started development. SC is still not done and Cyberpunk is having expansions. Large picture it's better FOR PLAYERS to have investors than sell ships. I have no doubt the CEO is glad to have card blanche and no deadlines but this is not a way to run a project.
I'm close to 5k Dollar into funding - I want the Star Engine to be successfull. I don't really care abut the ships and Star Citizen as a game in the end. I want this engine to work and therefore giving a new base for VR MMORPGS. Just imagine a Ready Play One world or Sword Art Online in Real Life etc. Star Engine is the one engine to make all of this happen!
I'm just over the five grand mark as well but Star engine is definitely lacking when compared to UE5. I also didn't back the engine I backed the game. Honestly don't care if no other game uses the star engine I just want SC to be successful and fun.
44:30 in practice, if we talk about the real consequences for the gameplay, it really doesnt affect you the fact that someone else paid more $$ for a ship. Let's say that you met a guild in a Hammerhead, you would really have no way of knowing whether they bought it outside or in-game. They can attack you and have the same advantage, whether they have paid real money or not.
One and a half hours of good productive discussion and there´s still so much more I´d want to talk about. How did planetary tech evolve - the original plan of tiles just like Starfield - the aquisition of the Crytek devs - the fully explorable planets. The impact the community has on the game itself, best example thatz comes to mind at this point are the race tracks and so on ...
Gacha games rake in a fortune and never seem to get same kind of ire. I know several people who have spent thousands on those kinds of games who look at Star Citizen like it's run by Bernie Madoff.
I got a friend who spent over 20k on Genshin in a single year and thinks I'm crazy for spending a couple hundred on ships in the past year. I don't understand how the gaming community just seems to give a free pass to Gacha games but hates on even relatively harmless microtransactions like buying a skin in a game.
29:22 It's strange to me people think of CIG devs as somehow undermotivated, but that probably comes from not knowing anything about the scope of the game and the work required to make it. If you think it's just a standard amount of work, then I suppose it would seem like taking abnormally long is a matter of lax developers. And I've definitely talked to people who think CIG has been taking over a decade to make basically a bog standard space dogfighter. They have NO idea about the bleeding edge shit CIG is doing, so to them CIG must be incompetent. It's wild to me people know so little about literally the most heavily documented game in history - Over an hour of deep dive BTS content just about every week for damn near 10 years - but here we are. But no, it's not a normal game and not a normal amount of work. The devs are already doing their best, and they're doing VERY well.
I mean, lets say this pretty clear. Is SC the game with the larger scope ever? NO FUCK NO. Is it the game with the larger scope that is managing to actually achieve it? YES FUCK YES. And the difference is the managers and the devs. If we didnt have CR, this game would have closed the second year as many others with large scopes, but people is just too stupid to understand this.
I think the main issue with investors is R&D. Star citizen had to make a new tech that allows for no loading screen. Look at companies now, they would rather spend their money on stock buy back instead of developing something new. Very few investors would spend that amount and time. Also the engine is going to be it money maker.
Yea, and I think a major reason CIG doesn't wanna seek investors at this point is because they don't wanna be strangled by some bs deadline. That dude said some features can be refined or added after the initial release, that's exactly how E:D crashed and burn.
@@SnowTerebi Its also wishful thinking to think that a Publisher company would allow them to 'add back' the features they stripped out to meet deadline. To them, if there's features that were pulled out because they were under-developed they will make it to the 2nd game to increase ROI. those 'features' never show back up to the original game its always the next game after....or the next and so on.
@@grygaming5519 Yea, that can definitely be the case. All I'm saying is even the publisher let it happen (again using E:D as example), it's going to be extremely difficult for the development team to do it right.
@@SnowTerebi However E:D is probably the best example for what I said because all those features they promised...had to be purchased. Every Publisher does this, and we've seen it in other games.
I find it so ironic that people have a problem with the amount of money CIG is taking in, while other game companies take in way more money and exist for profit. CIG puts their revenue back into development, so I don’t mind spending more money.
literally CIG is doing the best case scenario for the consumer, a for ever expanding game, without asking for DLCs blocking content or stuff like that, and u get everything just paying the base pack for 45 USD... Seems like people prefere the 100 bucks games + DLC blocking content + season pass blocking content + "quality of life" pay to wins.... really pathetic and frustrating how lost the people is
The problem with Starfield is the Ship is supposed to be a big part of it, hence the shipbuilder being one of the best features of the game. Yet, the ship you spent hours designing and adapting ends up being useless. Maybe if they added things that could only be crafted and researched in Zero G, we would have use for the workbenches and research stations on ships.
All you have to do is make a ship with a hole in the middle of it. Then it would not matter if it was made out of tinfoil because no ship weapon will hit it. That is the level of complexity of Starfields ship builds and throughout the whole game. Now compare just how many ways you can damage and destroy a ship in StarCitizen. Then add that different level amount to the whole of it. Then consider how much was spent on both games with one that had everything they needed from the start and other that had build there company's tools and personnel levels up.😮
As I look at the past 10 years I have been part of SC, one thought comes back to my mind over and over again. If someone had told me 10 years ago, that over a period of 10 years, I would sink $5k into this game, I would have laughed them out of the room. It took a few years to get to that first $1k, didn't reach it until 2017. Then it all just snowballed from there, lol. As my income increased, the amount I was willing to put into the game increased. As progress slowed down, or communication decreased, I would ignore the game for long periods of time, and certainly not provide any money. I can't tell you how many times I said "this is the last ship." I have stopped saying that, because now I know better. Space Tomato, thank you for the great discussion!
The thing about that particular package that wasn't covered here is that specific package is updated and will go up every single year. It's the package that contains all released ships at that time, so as they release more, it will go up in price to match. And it's not like the people who want to, and are even eligible to buy it in the first place, are required to spend that as an additional amount to what they've already spent. The intent with that package is to allow those who have already spent close to that amount, to turn all their existing ships into store credit, and add the difference between the value of all of those and this package to get any other ships they may be missing.
The 48k pack is honestly smart marketing at the end of the day, high end apparel brands do something similar. It is a sort of "shock" marketing. Clothing brands will feature and outlandish looking, or priced item to attract people to their website to "see if it is real." This approach is far more likely to attract eyeballs of someone from outside the community than a ship commercial, or feature update. The one key difference is that there are members of the Star Citizen audience that will buy the outlandish offering and then defend the purchase as legitimate at length :') At the end of the day, none of it is perfect but I think all of us can agree there is something special in the project and we just want to see the biggest and baddest space game they can make.
What, to me, always seems to be missing in those P2W discussions for an MMO is the time factor. What, if any, difference does a purchase today make to a new player who starts a year or two from now? Sure you get a bit of a head start by buying a ship, but compared to a casual player, someone with enough time and dedication to grind for the same ship in an insane amount of time would, mechanically, appear no different.
Not only that, but imo the people that go out of their way to grind for a ship (say someone who just buys a Vanguard vs someone who worked for it) have the potential to understand some game systems better. They tend to start out in a worse ship, and that experience does slightly mold you! When you can do amazing things in a worse ship, you tend to be better in an EVEN better ship. Meanwhile the otherplayer might have the initial advantage in that specific gear, but overall, he might have a (slight) disadvantage over time.
46:10 Exactly. Whether someone is better equipped because they paid more money than you, because they play more often, or simply because they began playing earlier in the lifetime of the game, there will always be players operating at a deficit to other players for some reason other than skill. People speak about "Pay2Win" like it creates a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist, but it's really just another dimension to a problem inherent with persistent progression in multiplayer environments. 🤷🏿♂️
@@Frank-costanza True. Tbf, it's not like the PU is an 'arena' multiplayer environment where there's a leaderboard or some shit. For a lot of people, they're not even really competing with other players mostly. But yeah, every so often, you will encounter a whale in a Perseus trying to bully you. And to my point, that would be the case even if they weren't selling ships, because there are always new players far behind the veteran players. C'est la vie. C'est la guerre.
I am glad that this conversation took place and is shared for all too see. In my subjective opinion conversations like this are important to have rather than the back and forth we traditionally get across the platforms. In short I think we are all better for it and can see the bigger picture and come to an amicable consensus. トマトさん、おつかれさまでした
This was my first actual whole podcast I've ever watched. I'm so glad you didn't hound them with info but just enough to explain stuff perfectly. Love the energy between you two with much mutual respect within each other. Great stuff dude! o7
Something that didnt get brought up on the competitive edge aspect is its not just big ship better. Its 6 players vs 1. If 1 player came in with a hammerhead against and aurora, the hammerhead will lose(eventually). I think if tomato had brought up a comparison between the scythe($300), gladius($90), lightening($300), and super hornet($180), it wouldve produced a more clear argument as to how pay 2 win star citizen is when the super hornet is currently pretty much the meta when it comes to single pilot ship combat.
It is also kinda crazy to me how EVE online doesn't get labeled as pay 2 win very often if at all because you can put $48,000 into that game and be ahead of people who have been playing it for years I'd imagine.
The real reason we have these massive prices on packages, is due to people buying many ships, and they were all over the place. To explain on the website, if you have a ship in a list and all the flair items, it takes forever to sort through all that. So they made packs, so you could melt those ships and just get a pack and customize the pack back to your ships. Now say you keep buying more, then you melt those and upgrade the pack to another pack, and it keeps going if you keep buying more. So you simply open one pack and see all your ships under it. Then you have those whales who can just spend a 1000bucks and then just spend another, 47000 dollars. For you can't even see the packs until you have spent $1000, which is to protect consumers from over committing.
Tomato is so right that starfield fails to give a sense of scale. For me the fast travel system makes it all feel meaningless and arcady. Also star citizen i think doesnt take the cake for money spent per player .. i think that is train simulator ❤ Also, starfield bored me sadly.... Not exactly sure bethesda is the model for how to make a good game
Its not, the joke has been that the community would always fix their games. Bethesda games have always been buggy and its always the community that has fixed them. I mean the only reason they re-released skyrim as an example was because a modder made a 4k Upscale mod...and Todd saw it as a means to make money.
I’ve been saying that starfield took all the downside of a massive game space and then threw away the major upside of the sense of scale by sticking fast travel everywhere. People don’t actually measure size in distance we measure it in time. A million miles is only as big as the time it takes to cross it.
It was pretty obvious that people wanted an online variant of freelancer. They modded the heck out of the game to get that. So CR going first Star Citizen single-player and then promising to give it so much online potential as possible was the original goal. With increased funding they started separating it in two games.
Im in deep with SC and have a lot fun with it, especially with the org, but there is some softening of the downsides of SC, taking advantage of outsiders lack of knowledge. The game isnt where it should be, even considering the tech they are building.
I was going to be so disappointed at the end if you hadn't invited him to play. I was yelling "ask him to play!" ..... and you did. Looking forward to that first time in for him.
I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the people who only come in and say "this is vaporware", should really watch the latest citizencon. And especially when you're a journalist and you don't know quite a lot about the different layers of development the engine has to undergo to realize the ultimate dream goal of this game, might be confused. People have to understand that star citizen is partially in a phase of R&D, to get server meshing working, so that people can seamlessly travel from and to systems, then get the engineering and salivating and mining and base building game loops to function in a MMO environment (where everyone can see what others are doing). That can look like "feature creep", but it's really a fundamental phase for this game to get feature complete. So if they watch star citizen, especially the pieces about the engine, star cloth, engineering and server meshing segments. That looks a bit like CiG's own GDC conference, where they literally will explain the new tech behind the game. I think when ppl realize that they're not only making 2 games, but also making a multiplayer portion where every detail of the gameplay and ship operation , has to not only exist in an online environment where it's observable by another player, but also make it in such a way that it's optimized for the servers and clients and runs properly. They have to develop a lot of tricks behind the scenes to have servers only render or visibly simulate player ships/actions whenever they are in sight of a client to make the most performance headroom both on the server and the client, so that hundreds of players can engage in space battles or salvaging operations or whatever other gameplay type they want to implement. That is an astronomical task. And I think it's the dream of ultimately having this in our hands that keeps us motivated in following and funding the development. This can't be compared with a "day before" scenario because there is a very detailed public roadmap where you can see every aspect of the game laid out, and every team working on it, the projected timeframe. And within a month we're going to see this roadmap expand and show everything for 2024. I can only speak for myself but that roadmap in itself is some sort of addiction to me, to constantly see things added to it, to know that the game is in continued development, and then to see these features coming online is a feast to see. Sometimes I'll take a break, for example, when I knew that they were struggling a lot with entity streaming, I didn't play the game during summer, and by 3.22 I started playing regularly , and testing on the preview channel as well, because I know the development was going into the next phase, reinvigorating my interest. You have to take a few breaks in order to not be burnt out. But I'm looking forward to the sleek overhaul and new gameplay systems coming in this year.
Investors in publishers as you said tomato, would push in a good example is the fact that we're getting the replication layer and meshing after all of this time. There is no publisher developer or house that would have put the amount of time and passion into getting to this milestone. And hence the reason why it's crowdfunded and completely independent. With all of its faults.
1:13:20 More important than the crafting potential, is the interactivity. Star Citizen, being the most immersion-oriented game yet, is so much more dense with MEANINGFUL detail, with things that players can actually USE, than other games that other games feel super shallow to me now. Other games are like 95% nonfunctional set dressing, while damn near everything you see or hear in SC has meaning and gameplay implications. THAT'S why the detail CIG puts in is essential - and why other devs haven't even tried competing yet.
Very glad to see you two bridging the gap :) Great content creators. Imagine the positive effect on the CIG devs if people focused on positivity and knowledge.....what we all do, effects others. There is so much misconception. Would have to say proud of you both for being so level headed and encouraging. A pleasure to watch 👍 Negativity not required!
I think what you are missing on why they crowd funded is because no publisher would spend this much money or time into a game that is this ambitious and huge in scale. Look at the controversy over boulders gate 3 over the scale of that game which is a fraction of star citizens scale. How the biggest publishers are saying don’t expect this to be the norm. Because of the scale and time put into it and money involved. They are also building a server side mesh that scales so big if they manage to complete it will revolutionize gaming in scale. That alone is more then any publisher would dare to touch due to unknown risk and investment
We do, in fact, buy ships. Technically, AND legally. I pay VAT tax when I buy a ship, in their events that CIG themselves call "ship sales". If it was a pledge, or a donation, or whatever other word CIG try to sell it is, there would be no tax associated with it. But there is, therefore, legally, I'm buying an item and expect to receive what I pay for.
Great discussion, love to hear an outside perspective but someone that understands the gaming industry and can understand some of the hurdles SC has had
I don't care if they ever finish the game as long as they keep adding features because it's already fun as fuck. Games are already to the point of moving past a release with dlcs and stuff, so in the end what does a release even matter.
Buying ship to fund the game was interesting, but the next steps from now on should be a rather more sustainable way of funding. Subscription should be in like any other MMOs to support servers. The biggest cost will not be salaries, it will be servers with dynamic server meshing. And selling ships will break game design and won't finance enough.
The big question is, once SC is released, how does CIG plan on paying for the running cost of the server infrastructure, let alone the development team? It's either going to be a paid to win game where you have to really grind for money and reputation or pay for it OR A monthly subscription. Now, if you purchased a $45 ship package, that's probably not too bad. However, i dare say the average person has spent between $100 - 150. And there is an issue with having multiple ships as it breaks the realism and takes away the fun and self accomplished of scrapping together enough money to buy a ship. Like the real world, most people can only afford one car.
They will obviously make and sell new ships (and probably make them only available to pay for IRL for a while - I reckon about 1-6 months) and other items (paints, character customization and so forth). My hope however is that they release them in-game at once, and the only difference in how you play is the amount of time you have. If you have more money than time: buy ships with real money. If you have more time than money: earn the ships in-game. I just wish that the balance of these two methods of earning ships will be in a good place, and that playerd will be able to enjoy the game in ships they love flying! Also, you forget that they are creating an engine and tech that, if successful will be absolutely industry-bending. They will make good bank on that. We will have to wait and see how the company will handle the game after launch of the PU. They definitely have options to make sure the game isn't pay to win without a forced subscription model. Time will tell.
44:00 I dont think he understands that every ship can be bought with in-game money, and its driving me crazy that youre not making it clear hahaha EDIT: ok you did it 1:23:35 i am happy now hahah
Gaming IS about the only business that can deliver and sell an unfinished product and not be a scam. Thats why, in my opinion, the industry nowadays IS heavily focused arround marketing rather than development and making fully funcioning games (see why baldurs gate IS an "anomaly")
my only defense against the 1000 dollar club is that there are people who have been playing since like 2016-2018 and if you actually sit down and total up each CoD from 2018b till now that's 360 then you have the dlc pack in cod ww2 that's 30, then MW/s 4 battle passes and each other cods 4 battel passes plus some skins a player would've bought it comes rather close to 1k. AS for development I'm understandingly frustrated, I get why its taking so long. Like they could've put progression in the game but then any other feature after like cargo would also need a form of progression instead of one fell swoop across the board, its much easier to do them all at once then each time one comes out. Also for how long it takes I'm fine with because with how the gaming industry is now in rushed development I will wait. I haven't seen one instance of devs being overworked like I have in Blizzard/Activision. Like I'm almost certain that the next CoD would have been in development for maybe 1.5 years, be almost the exact same with no actually new features. Just recycled ones they brought back. And the only thing to fully work is the shop.
Im not sure if it was discussed later on, or in the comments, but they started off with crowd funding to show potential investors that there was real interest in the game. I think originally they were looking for $1-5m in crowd funding to then get investment, but when the crowd funding blew past $20m they realised they wouldn't need investors.
ST, I have a question for you, how much money have they made to this point and how many star systems have they completed? Been out of the loop for a while and was just checking. Cheers
CIG sticks with crowdfunding because the crowdfunders are both the players and the investors. And players care deeply about the fully realized potential and success of this game unlike traditional investors who only care about making a profit and who are unloyally willing to sacrifice the full release of the game as long as they make a return on investment.
The learning curve is definitely a massive hindrance to new players in the game right now. I've brought a few friends into the game recently and even without some of the things that are Coming Soon:tm: it's a lot to take in without a lot of help. I think this is an area where orgs and systems like tutorials & security will be very important to the experience in the near future, these are natural ways to integrate new players and give them a safe-ish way to discover game mechanics and metas without beaten over the head by a thousand little things they don't know to consider. It's frustrating when you don't understand why you're dead or in jail or stranded on some random moon without any atmosphere!
Not gonna lie, was a little disappointed you left The Expanse off the list of space movies and shows around the 55:55 😂 One of the best live action Space Series imo
All you have to do is make a ship with a hole in the middle of it. Then it would not matter if it was made out of tinfoil because no ship weapon will hit it. That is the level of complexity of Starfields ship builds and throughout the whole game. Now compare just how many ways you can damage and destroy a ship in StarCitizen. Then add that different level amount to the whole of it. Then consider how much was spent on both games with one that had everything they needed from the start and other that had build there company's tools and personnel levels up.😮
Regarding 34:20, if CIG ever suddenly got a big investor with a controlling stake, it would be seen as a huge betrayal by a significant part of the community.
My pledge to Star Citizen gives me Squad 42. Don't care when it comes out. To me Squad 42 will be a long tutorial that after they play it and want more, they will start to play SC. This will also bring in a new flood of cash + of course all those experienced devs. I look forward to the next 5-10 years.
Great talk and i hope for more other view on the projekt. 23:44 I still belive SC is a bug in the capaltist system it shuld not happen. 36:00 i think he is more than right on this yt is smal part and games shuld never be dev after only this crowd
I still belive SC is a bug in the capaltist system it shuld not happen - and specially in the gaming industry, indeed SC is so unique, its socialism applied to game development both in good and bad ways
Personal experience cannot be replaced by hearsay. That's the biggest issue with a lot of content. It is created by people who have not personally experienced the subject and only heard about.
Respectfully this guest sounds like a AAA Dev Bot. The players are the investors of Star Citizen. And the initial rallying Cry of Cloud Imperium games was that they would only release the game when it was ready. And unlike traditional developers who still haven't seen to have learned this lesson. CIG continue to collaborate closely with its players and I think this is why the game continues to grow and thrive in development.
Excellent episode Tomato!! More people need to be made aware of what is actually going on with SC and help with cutting through all the BS and clickbait articles/videos. While at the same time setting them up with realistic expectations for what they're getting into and the problems it currently has, and how to work with them and understand them. This game is truly something special.
As someone whos spent more than a few starter packs worth but hadn't thrown thousands in the game, I've already got my moneys worth if I compare it to other games I've thrown money at. If the game releases in a state I enjoy at this point, its basically just a bonus. The key is to not play it every single day, and if a patch is rough you just come back another week/month.
@@Shoate25 you trying to drag everyone down to the lowest possible scummy level or something? No. I don't do that now and I don't intend to let myself slide down that road in the future. It's greedy and it's wrong.
@@ncpolley Drag people down? No I'm asking a question. You can try to make it a moral argument all you want, but I guarantee you that a majority of people would love to get paid to do nothing or do the minimum. And that's not even going into the fact that Bethesda is a business, and the point of businesses are to make money.
@@Shoate25 Actually rereleasing Skyrim for $60 10 times is wrong. Thanks for asking! But wait... Bethesda is a business???!!! Oh. My. God. I didn't know. That makes all of their behavior good and ethical! All you had to say is that they want to make money! That's all that's needed for a thing to go from bad to good! I'm sure glad to know this now!
@@ncpolley Just admit that youve never worked a day in your life to secure your livelyhood, and spare us the moral grandstanding. Youre just antagonizing people because you dont like them pointing out your naive worldview, grow the fuck up.
Investors want to create the next clone of the last successful game, something that'll make them a profit with little risk. Minimal development time, only proven technologies and the least innovation they can get away with. This is why so many games are either boring copy pastes or released broken. Innovation and attention to detail takes time, so CIG taking their time is fine by me. I don't agree with all of their decisions and I'm not a fan of their marketing, I will be critical when I feel it's warranted, but only but having time, money and space to develop can the boundaries in gaming be pushed.
i think star citizens having investors would take away from star citizen that we know and the star citizen they want to develop but thats just my opinion
The pricing only shocks people because NOBODY reads anything anymore. People TLDR everything and don't put in the effort to get any context or figure out why before they start raging.
I have a pretty basic take on the money stuff. The only accountability for a business is money. Whether a public company with investors or private with backers, if money keeps flowing the game keeps going. Most of SC's income is poured back into game development, which wouldn't happen if we had investors. Backers don't expect a financial return, just gameplay. That seems like the better option of the two.
My only problem with Star Citizen is after 12 years there is little to no actual progression for a player. There is no permanent reputation that would unlock some cool items. Items are actually bland and boring, same with ship components. You can't really tweak and tinker with your ship. SC is just a bunch of cool systems slapped together with no actual glue.
Best case, a full day to the moon, 9 months to mars from earth, yet people big mad it takes more that two minutes to go from entering a solar system to ground fall. People are weird in games
star citizen isnt done and will never be done. however sq42, it is done and its in polish phase atm. i think sq42 could go to live open beta oct22,2024 if not sooner. then it will get reviewed by ign, probably sept 28th 2025 preoct20th 2025 release. that is just what i am expecting from statements. which means pyro4.0 is close to oct22,2024. as pyro, nyx, odin, merkul and terra are also all nearly done. so soon after citizen con 2024, we are probably gonna get star citizen persistent universe beta 1.0
as current persistence players player count is 4.1million players. 97% are invested in sq42. that's near 3.99 million players. where reason for the polish is to put some additive features from pu into squadron as well as working out any kinks. so when it goes to live beta tests for 1 year with early release with limited playthrew. that will cause as massive amount of hype from Q4 24 threw Q4 25. where the next couple of years gives cig the time to get those account sales for russia and china and other areas. then by time of release you are looking at 3.99+4.55 million players, + the eastern markets for another 5.2million players. putting squadron 42 at or near 13.57m players at time of release. toppling pubg and counterstrike2 numbers by a few million. as i think cig is aiming for the number1 spot by +3 mil players at launch in winter25. pushing paleworld from #3 spot to #4 spot in records. and its gonna be awesome!
Great discussion. Just want to commend them both. Space Tomato for reaching out and bridging the gap in knowledge. LoneVaultWanderer for being open minded, level headed, and insightful as well. Dare I say, we'll see him in the verse? :)
I would gladly donate my Alt Account lol!
I would like to hear his first impression of SC after a couple hours of gameplay with Tomato (even better if the whole thing is streamed).
Sounds like a nightmare to have investors pushing for hard deadlines in Star Citizen. I strongly believe this financial model builds a more sustainable and enjoyable workplace, obviously not without issues, but better than publicly traded AAA studios who constantly underdeliver and cut staff to meet quarterly earning goals.
I'm glad you touched on melting ships and that they are earnable in game. I asume most people who see that you can buy a pack for 48k and that you've already needed to spend 1k or 10k to do so, would think that 48k is on top of what you've spent already. The concept of melting is quite unique, as a backer from 2014 I didn't learn about it untill this year, and I was baffled there isn't a fee to do so.
The reason I didn't know about melting is because I always thought the price of ships was insane, especially with the state of the game. When returning to the game this summer after a long break, the game was surprisingly good, and naturally that changed my percieved value of ships. It is scary how normalized ship prices within the community have gotten over the years, and very understandable that people outside of the community get a negative reaction when they learn about them.
My positive takeaway is that the ships in this game are amazing, and that wouldn't be the case if they weren't sold in the way they are.
Glassdoor reviews from former CIG employees, paint the complete opposite picture of what its like working on this game. Citing serious issues with management, and a lack of skilled employees that know how to work on a game this ambitious. Star Citizens development troubles continue because of inexperience devs, and incompetent management. Some of the issues mentioned include hiring people because they invested a lot of money and time into Star Citizen. A terrible combination.
@@omgitsbees You have to take glass door with a grain of salt as anyone can really comment there and only disgruntled employees usually care to post there. Happy employees are still employees. I live near the Austin office and have met several people working there and every one had nothing but good things to say, even after 5-10 years. Between work/life balance, pay, benefits, environment, etc. I don't know about the other offices, of course, but I doubt it varies much since it's the same general culture and management.
@@omgitsbees I hate to tell you but GlassDoor is the Yelp of companies. Those who often say stuff are those who have an engrossed sense of self.
I do think this project would have been greatly improved had someone stood there in that conference room and just said "no CR, we aren't adding that." every once in a while. Most feature creep in this game greatly improved the game, no doubt. Some (looking at face recognition, lol), maybe not so much.
If you have outside investor, there is no way they won't start interfering with development of the game. Their goal will most certainly will only revolve around maximizing revenue, that's it.
29:25 Yes, investors wanted a return on investment on CP2077, how did that work out?
Worked out great. The game is out and patched. Where is Star Citizen?
@@MarcinP2 yeah, it's great now, years after, after lawsuits, after damage to their reputation, imagine of they didn't have to meet investor expectations, and instead aimed to meet gamers expectations
@@Batlafication I remember SC existed before Cyberpunk started development. SC is still not done and Cyberpunk is having expansions.
Large picture it's better FOR PLAYERS to have investors than sell ships.
I have no doubt the CEO is glad to have card blanche and no deadlines but this is not a way to run a project.
Is very playable and Still earning a profit with record pledges? that's where it's at@@MarcinP2
I think this is one of the best shows you have done, simply because of the content covered. Well done.
I'm close to 5k Dollar into funding - I want the Star Engine to be successfull. I don't really care abut the ships and Star Citizen as a game in the end. I want this engine to work and therefore giving a new base for VR MMORPGS. Just imagine a Ready Play One world or Sword Art Online in Real Life etc. Star Engine is the one engine to make all of this happen!
I'm just over the five grand mark as well but Star engine is definitely lacking when compared to UE5. I also didn't back the engine I backed the game. Honestly don't care if no other game uses the star engine I just want SC to be successful and fun.
44:30 in practice, if we talk about the real consequences for the gameplay, it really doesnt affect you the fact that someone else paid more $$ for a ship. Let's say that you met a guild in a Hammerhead, you would really have no way of knowing whether they bought it outside or in-game. They can attack you and have the same advantage, whether they have paid real money or not.
One and a half hours of good productive discussion and there´s still so much more I´d want to talk about.
How did planetary tech evolve - the original plan of tiles just like Starfield - the aquisition of the Crytek devs - the fully explorable planets.
The impact the community has on the game itself, best example thatz comes to mind at this point are the race tracks and so on ...
Gacha games rake in a fortune and never seem to get same kind of ire. I know several people who have spent thousands on those kinds of games who look at Star Citizen like it's run by Bernie Madoff.
I got a friend who spent over 20k on Genshin in a single year and thinks I'm crazy for spending a couple hundred on ships in the past year. I don't understand how the gaming community just seems to give a free pass to Gacha games but hates on even relatively harmless microtransactions like buying a skin in a game.
That's absolutely mental @@LykosMenon
Really great to see this recent controversy from 2 different perspective and good conversations around different levels of the player base
29:22 It's strange to me people think of CIG devs as somehow undermotivated, but that probably comes from not knowing anything about the scope of the game and the work required to make it. If you think it's just a standard amount of work, then I suppose it would seem like taking abnormally long is a matter of lax developers.
And I've definitely talked to people who think CIG has been taking over a decade to make basically a bog standard space dogfighter. They have NO idea about the bleeding edge shit CIG is doing, so to them CIG must be incompetent. It's wild to me people know so little about literally the most heavily documented game in history - Over an hour of deep dive BTS content just about every week for damn near 10 years - but here we are.
But no, it's not a normal game and not a normal amount of work. The devs are already doing their best, and they're doing VERY well.
I mean, lets say this pretty clear. Is SC the game with the larger scope ever? NO FUCK NO. Is it the game with the larger scope that is managing to actually achieve it? YES FUCK YES. And the difference is the managers and the devs. If we didnt have CR, this game would have closed the second year as many others with large scopes, but people is just too stupid to understand this.
I think the main issue with investors is R&D. Star citizen had to make a new tech that allows for no loading screen. Look at companies now, they would rather spend their money on stock buy back instead of developing something new. Very few investors would spend that amount and time. Also the engine is going to be it money maker.
Yea, and I think a major reason CIG doesn't wanna seek investors at this point is because they don't wanna be strangled by some bs deadline.
That dude said some features can be refined or added after the initial release, that's exactly how E:D crashed and burn.
@@SnowTerebi Its also wishful thinking to think that a Publisher company would allow them to 'add back' the features they stripped out to meet deadline. To them, if there's features that were pulled out because they were under-developed they will make it to the 2nd game to increase ROI. those 'features' never show back up to the original game its always the next game after....or the next and so on.
@@grygaming5519 Yea, that can definitely be the case. All I'm saying is even the publisher let it happen (again using E:D as example), it's going to be extremely difficult for the development team to do it right.
@@SnowTerebi However E:D is probably the best example for what I said because all those features they promised...had to be purchased.
Every Publisher does this, and we've seen it in other games.
I find it so ironic that people have a problem with the amount of money CIG is taking in, while other game companies take in way more money and exist for profit. CIG puts their revenue back into development, so I don’t mind spending more money.
literally CIG is doing the best case scenario for the consumer, a for ever expanding game, without asking for DLCs blocking content or stuff like that, and u get everything just paying the base pack for 45 USD... Seems like people prefere the 100 bucks games + DLC blocking content + season pass blocking content + "quality of life" pay to wins.... really pathetic and frustrating how lost the people is
The problem with Starfield is the Ship is supposed to be a big part of it, hence the shipbuilder being one of the best features of the game. Yet, the ship you spent hours designing and adapting ends up being useless. Maybe if they added things that could only be crafted and researched in Zero G, we would have use for the workbenches and research stations on ships.
All you have to do is make a ship with a hole in the middle of it.
Then it would not matter if it was made out of tinfoil because no ship weapon will hit it.
That is the level of complexity of Starfields ship builds and throughout the whole game.
Now compare just how many ways you can damage and destroy a ship in StarCitizen.
Then add that different level amount to the whole of it.
Then consider how much was spent on both games with one that had everything they needed from the start and other that had build there company's tools and personnel levels up.😮
As I look at the past 10 years I have been part of SC, one thought comes back to my mind over and over again. If someone had told me 10 years ago, that over a period of 10 years, I would sink $5k into this game, I would have laughed them out of the room. It took a few years to get to that first $1k, didn't reach it until 2017. Then it all just snowballed from there, lol. As my income increased, the amount I was willing to put into the game increased. As progress slowed down, or communication decreased, I would ignore the game for long periods of time, and certainly not provide any money. I can't tell you how many times I said "this is the last ship." I have stopped saying that, because now I know better. Space Tomato, thank you for the great discussion!
The thing about that particular package that wasn't covered here is that specific package is updated and will go up every single year. It's the package that contains all released ships at that time, so as they release more, it will go up in price to match. And it's not like the people who want to, and are even eligible to buy it in the first place, are required to spend that as an additional amount to what they've already spent. The intent with that package is to allow those who have already spent close to that amount, to turn all their existing ships into store credit, and add the difference between the value of all of those and this package to get any other ships they may be missing.
The 48k pack is honestly smart marketing at the end of the day, high end apparel brands do something similar. It is a sort of "shock" marketing. Clothing brands will feature and outlandish looking, or priced item to attract people to their website to "see if it is real." This approach is far more likely to attract eyeballs of someone from outside the community than a ship commercial, or feature update. The one key difference is that there are members of the Star Citizen audience that will buy the outlandish offering and then defend the purchase as legitimate at length :')
At the end of the day, none of it is perfect but I think all of us can agree there is something special in the project and we just want to see the biggest and baddest space game they can make.
What, to me, always seems to be missing in those P2W discussions for an MMO is the time factor. What, if any, difference does a purchase today make to a new player who starts a year or two from now?
Sure you get a bit of a head start by buying a ship, but compared to a casual player, someone with enough time and dedication to grind for the same ship in an insane amount of time would, mechanically, appear no different.
Not only that, but imo the people that go out of their way to grind for a ship (say someone who just buys a Vanguard vs someone who worked for it) have the potential to understand some game systems better.
They tend to start out in a worse ship, and that experience does slightly mold you! When you can do amazing things in a worse ship, you tend to be better in an EVEN better ship. Meanwhile the otherplayer might have the initial advantage in that specific gear, but overall, he might have a (slight) disadvantage over time.
This was a great conversation. Nice perspective from LVW on the project.
46:10 Exactly. Whether someone is better equipped because they paid more money than you, because they play more often, or simply because they began playing earlier in the lifetime of the game, there will always be players operating at a deficit to other players for some reason other than skill. People speak about "Pay2Win" like it creates a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist, but it's really just another dimension to a problem inherent with persistent progression in multiplayer environments. 🤷🏿♂️
It's funny because one of the bullet points they pitched the game on was no pay to win. But coupled that with ship purchases.
@@Frank-costanza True. Tbf, it's not like the PU is an 'arena' multiplayer environment where there's a leaderboard or some shit. For a lot of people, they're not even really competing with other players mostly.
But yeah, every so often, you will encounter a whale in a Perseus trying to bully you. And to my point, that would be the case even if they weren't selling ships, because there are always new players far behind the veteran players. C'est la vie. C'est la guerre.
@@LucidStrike that's a very good point.
A wholesome YT thread, lol
This is a fantastic conversation, it's always nice to see a level headed discussion about the project.
I am glad that this conversation took place and is shared for all too see. In my subjective opinion conversations like this are important to have rather than the back and forth we traditionally get across the platforms. In short I think we are all better for it and can see the bigger picture and come to an amicable consensus.
トマトさん、おつかれさまでした
This was my first actual whole podcast I've ever watched. I'm so glad you didn't hound them with info but just enough to explain stuff perfectly. Love the energy between you two with much mutual respect within each other. Great stuff dude! o7
Something that didnt get brought up on the competitive edge aspect is its not just big ship better. Its 6 players vs 1. If 1 player came in with a hammerhead against and aurora, the hammerhead will lose(eventually).
I think if tomato had brought up a comparison between the scythe($300), gladius($90), lightening($300), and super hornet($180), it wouldve produced a more clear argument as to how pay 2 win star citizen is when the super hornet is currently pretty much the meta when it comes to single pilot ship combat.
It is also kinda crazy to me how EVE online doesn't get labeled as pay 2 win very often if at all because you can put $48,000 into that game and be ahead of people who have been playing it for years I'd imagine.
I think investor deadlines would kill Star Citizen. That would just result in a game that would be half finished to make a deadline
Oh this is gonna be good, the collaboration I didn’t expect
The real reason we have these massive prices on packages, is due to people buying many ships, and they were all over the place. To explain on the website, if you have a ship in a list and all the flair items, it takes forever to sort through all that. So they made packs, so you could melt those ships and just get a pack and customize the pack back to your ships. Now say you keep buying more, then you melt those and upgrade the pack to another pack, and it keeps going if you keep buying more. So you simply open one pack and see all your ships under it. Then you have those whales who can just spend a 1000bucks and then just spend another, 47000 dollars. For you can't even see the packs until you have spent $1000, which is to protect consumers from over committing.
That was a very good conversation, very big thank you to LoneVaultWanderer for coming
Such an interesting conversation. Watching this would give any outsider a great view of the state of Star Citizen
Man, i used you watch Loan before 76, and then for a few months after. It was grim af.
Glad to see hes still around.
Tomato is so right that starfield fails to give a sense of scale. For me the fast travel system makes it all feel meaningless and arcady.
Also star citizen i think doesnt take the cake for money spent per player .. i think that is train simulator ❤
Also, starfield bored me sadly.... Not exactly sure bethesda is the model for how to make a good game
Its not, the joke has been that the community would always fix their games. Bethesda games have always been buggy and its always the community that has fixed them.
I mean the only reason they re-released skyrim as an example was because a modder made a 4k Upscale mod...and Todd saw it as a means to make money.
There are mobile games where people spend hundreds if not thousands over a year and don't really get anything but bigger numbers to show for that.
I’ve been saying that starfield took all the downside of a massive game space and then threw away the major upside of the sense of scale by sticking fast travel everywhere. People don’t actually measure size in distance we measure it in time. A million miles is only as big as the time it takes to cross it.
It was pretty obvious that people wanted an online variant of freelancer. They modded the heck out of the game to get that. So CR going first Star Citizen single-player and then promising to give it so much online potential as possible was the original goal. With increased funding they started separating it in two games.
Im in deep with SC and have a lot fun with it, especially with the org, but there is some softening of the downsides of SC, taking advantage of outsiders lack of knowledge.
The game isnt where it should be, even considering the tech they are building.
If the gameplay that I want was playable I would be positive but I can't see when it will be playable.
So... Free fly is starting. Hope to see the follow-up video after he gets the quick tour of the verse
I was going to be so disappointed at the end if you hadn't invited him to play. I was yelling "ask him to play!" ..... and you did. Looking forward to that first time in for him.
Awesome talk!
I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the people who only come in and say "this is vaporware", should really watch the latest citizencon. And especially when you're a journalist and you don't know quite a lot about the different layers of development the engine has to undergo to realize the ultimate dream goal of this game, might be confused.
People have to understand that star citizen is partially in a phase of R&D, to get server meshing working, so that people can seamlessly travel from and to systems, then get the engineering and salivating and mining and base building game loops to function in a MMO environment (where everyone can see what others are doing). That can look like "feature creep", but it's really a fundamental phase for this game to get feature complete. So if they watch star citizen, especially the pieces about the engine, star cloth, engineering and server meshing segments. That looks a bit like CiG's own GDC conference, where they literally will explain the new tech behind the game. I think when ppl realize that they're not only making 2 games, but also making a multiplayer portion where every detail of the gameplay and ship operation , has to not only exist in an online environment where it's observable by another player, but also make it in such a way that it's optimized for the servers and clients and runs properly. They have to develop a lot of tricks behind the scenes to have servers only render or visibly simulate player ships/actions whenever they are in sight of a client to make the most performance headroom both on the server and the client, so that hundreds of players can engage in space battles or salvaging operations or whatever other gameplay type they want to implement. That is an astronomical task.
And I think it's the dream of ultimately having this in our hands that keeps us motivated in following and funding the development. This can't be compared with a "day before" scenario because there is a very detailed public roadmap where you can see every aspect of the game laid out, and every team working on it, the projected timeframe. And within a month we're going to see this roadmap expand and show everything for 2024. I can only speak for myself but that roadmap in itself is some sort of addiction to me, to constantly see things added to it, to know that the game is in continued development, and then to see these features coming online is a feast to see.
Sometimes I'll take a break, for example, when I knew that they were struggling a lot with entity streaming, I didn't play the game during summer, and by 3.22 I started playing regularly , and testing on the preview channel as well, because I know the development was going into the next phase, reinvigorating my interest. You have to take a few breaks in order to not be burnt out. But I'm looking forward to the sleek overhaul and new gameplay systems coming in this year.
Investors in publishers as you said tomato, would push in a good example is the fact that we're getting the replication layer and meshing after all of this time. There is no publisher developer or house that would have put the amount of time and passion into getting to this milestone. And hence the reason why it's crowdfunded and completely independent. With all of its faults.
1:13:20 More important than the crafting potential, is the interactivity. Star Citizen, being the most immersion-oriented game yet, is so much more dense with MEANINGFUL detail, with things that players can actually USE, than other games that other games feel super shallow to me now. Other games are like 95% nonfunctional set dressing, while damn near everything you see or hear in SC has meaning and gameplay implications. THAT'S why the detail CIG puts in is essential - and why other devs haven't even tried competing yet.
Tomato, you really should just get an alt account for guests to borrow: free-fly days can be a hot mess.
That's the plan, actually!
Very glad to see you two bridging the gap :) Great content creators. Imagine the positive effect on the CIG devs if people focused on positivity and knowledge.....what we all do, effects others. There is so much misconception.
Would have to say proud of you both for being so level headed and encouraging. A pleasure to watch 👍 Negativity not required!
@LoneVaultWanderer needs to react to the latest Squadron 42 and StarEngine demo.
I'll maybe see if he wants to check it out!
I think what you are missing on why they crowd funded is because no publisher would spend this much money or time into a game that is this ambitious and huge in scale. Look at the controversy over boulders gate 3 over the scale of that game which is a fraction of star citizens scale. How the biggest publishers are saying don’t expect this to be the norm. Because of the scale and time put into it and money involved. They are also building a server side mesh that scales so big if they manage to complete it will revolutionize gaming in scale. That alone is more then any publisher would dare to touch due to unknown risk and investment
Heyyy its Johnny! I'm a big MMArcade enjoyer. Great pod!
That's pretty cool! Good dude!
One good session of jump town with five or six other people, and you are hooked
We do, in fact, buy ships. Technically, AND legally. I pay VAT tax when I buy a ship, in their events that CIG themselves call "ship sales". If it was a pledge, or a donation, or whatever other word CIG try to sell it is, there would be no tax associated with it. But there is, therefore, legally, I'm buying an item and expect to receive what I pay for.
Great discussion, love to hear an outside perspective but someone that understands the gaming industry and can understand some of the hurdles SC has had
The propaganda being employed against this project is wild. You can see how this guy came to the opinion that he had.
Cig is pretty damn good at its own propaganda haha
@@Eagle6Airsoft lets not confuse marketing with propaganda.
@@seveneternal7988 let’s not confuse out right lieing about things as marketing.
@@Eagle6Airsoft lets not invent, for that we already have the leakers and the refundians (well, they are the same)
Estimated delivery: 2014
My first rpg was fable. That was a fun game and beautiful for its time.
I don't care if they ever finish the game as long as they keep adding features because it's already fun as fuck. Games are already to the point of moving past a release with dlcs and stuff, so in the end what does a release even matter.
Very good podcast. Really appreciate both of your perspectives on star citizen and gaming in general.
Lovely podcast, i miss wholesome content like yours.
Im a Kraken & Polaris lover ;)
Buying ship to fund the game was interesting, but the next steps from now on should be a rather more sustainable way of funding. Subscription should be in like any other MMOs to support servers. The biggest cost will not be salaries, it will be servers with dynamic server meshing. And selling ships will break game design and won't finance enough.
so glad to see Johnny opening the doors to SC, would love to see yall play together
When CIG is ready for SQ42 Part 1 they will activate the audience they have and push marketing.
The big question is, once SC is released, how does CIG plan on paying for the running cost of the server infrastructure, let alone the development team?
It's either going to be a paid to win game where you have to really grind for money and reputation or pay for it OR
A monthly subscription.
Now, if you purchased a $45 ship package, that's probably not too bad. However, i dare say the average person has spent between $100 - 150.
And there is an issue with having multiple ships as it breaks the realism and takes away the fun and self accomplished of scrapping together enough money to buy a ship.
Like the real world, most people can only afford one car.
They will obviously make and sell new ships (and probably make them only available to pay for IRL for a while - I reckon about 1-6 months) and other items (paints, character customization and so forth). My hope however is that they release them in-game at once, and the only difference in how you play is the amount of time you have. If you have more money than time: buy ships with real money. If you have more time than money: earn the ships in-game. I just wish that the balance of these two methods of earning ships will be in a good place, and that playerd will be able to enjoy the game in ships they love flying!
Also, you forget that they are creating an engine and tech that, if successful will be absolutely industry-bending. They will make good bank on that.
We will have to wait and see how the company will handle the game after launch of the PU. They definitely have options to make sure the game isn't pay to win without a forced subscription model. Time will tell.
I can't wait to play this game full-time I own the Genesis and 5 industrial ships, all LTI, and will love running with my crews.
44:00 I dont think he understands that every ship can be bought with in-game money, and its driving me crazy that youre not making it clear hahaha
EDIT: ok you did it 1:23:35 i am happy now hahah
Gaming IS about the only business that can deliver and sell an unfinished product and not be a scam. Thats why, in my opinion, the industry nowadays IS heavily focused arround marketing rather than development and making fully funcioning games (see why baldurs gate IS an "anomaly")
my only defense against the 1000 dollar club is that there are people who have been playing since like 2016-2018 and if you actually sit down and total up each CoD from 2018b till now that's 360 then you have the dlc pack in cod ww2 that's 30, then MW/s 4 battle passes and each other cods 4 battel passes plus some skins a player would've bought it comes rather close to 1k. AS for development I'm understandingly frustrated, I get why its taking so long. Like they could've put progression in the game but then any other feature after like cargo would also need a form of progression instead of one fell swoop across the board, its much easier to do them all at once then each time one comes out. Also for how long it takes I'm fine with because with how the gaming industry is now in rushed development I will wait. I haven't seen one instance of devs being overworked like I have in Blizzard/Activision. Like I'm almost certain that the next CoD would have been in development for maybe 1.5 years, be almost the exact same with no actually new features. Just recycled ones they brought back. And the only thing to fully work is the shop.
Very good talk! Very interesting back and forth interview. Well done, gentlemen.
Im not sure if it was discussed later on, or in the comments, but they started off with crowd funding to show potential investors that there was real interest in the game. I think originally they were looking for $1-5m in crowd funding to then get investment, but when the crowd funding blew past $20m they realised they wouldn't need investors.
Wonderful discussion. Thanks for adding another voice!
ST, I have a question for you, how much money have they made to this point and how many star systems have they completed? Been out of the loop for a while and was just checking. Cheers
CIG sticks with crowdfunding because the crowdfunders are both the players and the investors. And players care deeply about the fully realized potential and success of this game unlike traditional investors who only care about making a profit and who are unloyally willing to sacrifice the full release of the game as long as they make a return on investment.
The learning curve is definitely a massive hindrance to new players in the game right now. I've brought a few friends into the game recently and even without some of the things that are Coming Soon:tm: it's a lot to take in without a lot of help. I think this is an area where orgs and systems like tutorials & security will be very important to the experience in the near future, these are natural ways to integrate new players and give them a safe-ish way to discover game mechanics and metas without beaten over the head by a thousand little things they don't know to consider. It's frustrating when you don't understand why you're dead or in jail or stranded on some random moon without any atmosphere!
Fantastic show ! Really loved the getting down real talk and hearing peoples views. Keep up the great work.
Not gonna lie, was a little disappointed you left The Expanse off the list of space movies and shows around the 55:55 😂 One of the best live action Space Series imo
Babylon5, Farscape, StarGate SG1/Atlantis/SGU, The Expanse, Andromeda
Probably some sort of bot throwing random comment but I'm still offended SGU get mentioned there :)
Now I know why he's called Tomato... cus he smooth
Hah! And maybe a tad red under pressure.
I thought the reason of the larger packs was that the whales wanted a consolidated package and CiG gave them that option and with a discount?
no rushing. make it perfect
All you have to do is make a ship with a hole in the middle of it.
Then it would not matter if it was made out of tinfoil because no ship weapon will hit it.
That is the level of complexity of Starfields ship builds and throughout the whole game.
Now compare just how many ways you can damage and destroy a ship in StarCitizen.
Then add that different level amount to the whole of it.
Then consider how much was spent on both games with one that had everything they needed from the start and other that had build there company's tools and personnel levels up.😮
Wow man! fire podcast heard about it on todays twitch stream! great work I really enjoyed it.
Regarding 34:20, if CIG ever suddenly got a big investor with a controlling stake, it would be seen as a huge betrayal by a significant part of the community.
My pledge to Star Citizen gives me Squad 42. Don't care when it comes out. To me Squad 42 will be a long tutorial that after they play it and want more, they will start to play SC. This will also bring in a new flood of cash + of course all those experienced devs. I look forward to the next 5-10 years.
Great talk and i hope for more other view on the projekt.
23:44 I still belive SC is a bug in the capaltist system it shuld not happen.
36:00 i think he is more than right on this yt is smal part and games shuld never be dev after only this crowd
I still belive SC is a bug in the capaltist system it shuld not happen - and specially in the gaming industry, indeed SC is so unique, its socialism applied to game development both in good and bad ways
Where are they actually doing studio tours still? I inquired about one and got an insulting response that they aren't.
Personal experience cannot be replaced by hearsay.
That's the biggest issue with a lot of content. It is created by people who have not personally experienced the subject and only heard about.
Yep! That's why these conversations really help imo
Respectfully this guest sounds like a AAA Dev Bot. The players are the investors of Star Citizen. And the initial rallying Cry of Cloud Imperium games was that they would only release the game when it was ready. And unlike traditional developers who still haven't seen to have learned this lesson. CIG continue to collaborate closely with its players and I think this is why the game continues to grow and thrive in development.
this guest sounds like how people on "the outside" see it. Like it or not, this is the view that the majority of ppl have who aren't in the SC bubble
@Mr Tomato…. Did you get a chance to play with him during the recent free to play?
great episode. loved to hear you explain things to an outsider
Excellent episode Tomato!! More people need to be made aware of what is actually going on with SC and help with cutting through all the BS and clickbait articles/videos. While at the same time setting them up with realistic expectations for what they're getting into and the problems it currently has, and how to work with them and understand them. This game is truly something special.
As someone whos spent more than a few starter packs worth but hadn't thrown thousands in the game, I've already got my moneys worth if I compare it to other games I've thrown money at. If the game releases in a state I enjoy at this point, its basically just a bonus. The key is to not play it every single day, and if a patch is rough you just come back another week/month.
Loved this video, more of you and the LonelyVaultWonderer! ❤
25:31 I mean, SC DOES have smth like that. Pay the subscriber fee and be granted the honour of purchasing items in the subscriber store
"You would do it too"
How about no? I would not release Skyrim 10 times.
if you had an easy way to just make a lot of money for the minimum amount of work possible, you wouldn't do it?
@@Shoate25 you trying to drag everyone down to the lowest possible scummy level or something?
No. I don't do that now and I don't intend to let myself slide down that road in the future. It's greedy and it's wrong.
@@ncpolley Drag people down? No I'm asking a question. You can try to make it a moral argument all you want, but I guarantee you that a majority of people would love to get paid to do nothing or do the minimum. And that's not even going into the fact that Bethesda is a business, and the point of businesses are to make money.
@@Shoate25 Actually rereleasing Skyrim for $60 10 times is wrong. Thanks for asking!
But wait...
Bethesda is a business???!!! Oh. My. God. I didn't know. That makes all of their behavior good and ethical! All you had to say is that they want to make money! That's all that's needed for a thing to go from bad to good! I'm sure glad to know this now!
@@ncpolley Just admit that youve never worked a day in your life to secure your livelyhood, and spare us the moral grandstanding.
Youre just antagonizing people because you dont like them pointing out your naive worldview, grow the fuck up.
Investors want to create the next clone of the last successful game, something that'll make them a profit with little risk. Minimal development time, only proven technologies and the least innovation they can get away with.
This is why so many games are either boring copy pastes or released broken.
Innovation and attention to detail takes time, so CIG taking their time is fine by me. I don't agree with all of their decisions and I'm not a fan of their marketing, I will be critical when I feel it's warranted, but only but having time, money and space to develop can the boundaries in gaming be pushed.
Great coverage of some important topics!
i think star citizens having investors would take away from star citizen that we know and the star citizen they want to develop but thats just my opinion
this was an excellent watch.
The pricing only shocks people because NOBODY reads anything anymore. People TLDR everything and don't put in the effort to get any context or figure out why before they start raging.
So who interviewed who?
I have a pretty basic take on the money stuff. The only accountability for a business is money. Whether a public company with investors or private with backers, if money keeps flowing the game keeps going. Most of SC's income is poured back into game development, which wouldn't happen if we had investors. Backers don't expect a financial return, just gameplay. That seems like the better option of the two.
My only problem with Star Citizen is after 12 years there is little to no actual progression for a player. There is no permanent reputation that would unlock some cool items. Items are actually bland and boring, same with ship components. You can't really tweak and tinker with your ship. SC is just a bunch of cool systems slapped together with no actual glue.
Best case, a full day to the moon, 9 months to mars from earth, yet people big mad it takes more that two minutes to go from entering a solar system to ground fall. People are weird in games
This is fantastic, glad I came across this.
Why not go with investors. the answer is simple. Doing it right often isnt fast. Investers only care about the money not the quality.
star citizen isnt done and will never be done. however sq42, it is done and its in polish phase atm. i think sq42 could go to live open beta oct22,2024 if not sooner. then it will get reviewed by ign, probably sept 28th 2025 preoct20th 2025 release. that is just what i am expecting from statements. which means pyro4.0 is close to oct22,2024. as pyro, nyx, odin, merkul and terra are also all nearly done. so soon after citizen con 2024, we are probably gonna get star citizen persistent universe beta 1.0
as current persistence players player count is 4.1million players. 97% are invested in sq42. that's near 3.99 million players. where reason for the polish is to put some additive features from pu into squadron as well as working out any kinks. so when it goes to live beta tests for 1 year with early release with limited playthrew. that will cause as massive amount of hype from Q4 24 threw Q4 25. where the next couple of years gives cig the time to get those account sales for russia and china and other areas. then by time of release you are looking at 3.99+4.55 million players, + the eastern markets for another 5.2million players. putting squadron 42 at or near 13.57m players at time of release. toppling pubg and counterstrike2 numbers by a few million. as i think cig is aiming for the number1 spot by +3 mil players at launch in winter25. pushing paleworld from #3 spot to #4 spot in records. and its gonna be awesome!