Today we're diving into how i believe CIG should begin having higher standards for each release, starting with 4.0 and how we can possibly influence them to do so.
💯% agree with you on this video. Your input towards the grander conversation of excellence with every patch goes a long way to bringing awareness to what the game needs to succeed at this point. It's been a long slog for some backers and I think they deserve to finally be rewarded, and to some degree vindicated, with a stable, feature rich game. I'm also concerned that everything has a breaking point, including backer patience and trust. Should the trust end among the "core" group, then that's it for SC.. let's hope we're far from that. If CIG have taken this long to produce the SC we have today, while giving the majority of their (attention) to SQ42, then I personally can forgive how development of SC has gone this far BUT with SQ42 "wrapping", CIG needs to really start pushing development of SC while maintaining quality. Hav0k, thanks for your excellent video AND no judging here but do tell.. which ship do have your eye on next.. ? I'm looking at the Valkyrie.. I know, I know, it's in a terrible state, like most of my ships. I guess I buy a little too much with my heart..
@ea4857 I think we are far from that, to be honest. There's still many people that are extremely invested in the game. Myself being one of them. Based on the fact that they've focused mostly on SQ42, I can definitely forgive the time it's taken. SQ42 was always meant to come first. I'm glad you enjoyed the video! I think I might have my eyes on the Polaris at some point. But that will be an in-game purchase for sure. The Legionaire is actually really awesome too.
@@Hav0kgotta admit the Polaris looks sweet. Isn't that a definite multi crew ship? I only have one pledged (truly) multi crewed ship - the Ironclad Assault which I may just upgrade or melt. I saw it and thought, hey.. I think I can get a lot of gameplay out of that hull! Let's see.. At this point I've pledged 11 (smaller) ships in my fleet and feel like I've covered most gameplay loops.. I love to dabble in all loops. Can't believe I've spent this much although no more than I might spend on my other hobby which I quit 4 years ago. I do have a couple of doubled up fighter types (light/medium/heavy) but it'll allow me to share with friends or an org. Really wish I'd have the time to grind for ships but due to my busy schedule, if I didn't buy ships I probably would own only one ship for a very very long time. I also suspect that when 1.0 rolls around, the ship economy will be adjusted and it'll take weeks to a few months of grind to own some of the smaller fighter types but I could be wrong.
I can handle the bugs, but the lag as of late has been almost unplayable. I can't stand it when I go to sit in my pilot seat it can take up to 1 or 2 minutes to sit or when I hop in a server and have to wait until the server leg stops so I can get out of bed
In the video, he talks about and implies that the game is a buggy mess because CIG is “rushing” that is so far from reality that it is a joke. It’s been 12 years. They’re not rushing anything they just have a bad approach to the design of the game.
Actually I'm pretty sure the wording I used was more along the lines of avoiding delays. This approach usually results in either pushing a patch that isn't ready to hit the deadline and also the removal of features. Which is accurate.
yeah the desync makes the game unplayable, I suspect they aren't really working on the networking issues atm because with 4.0 it will be all new code anyways
really enjoyed your input on this. subjective view from me, with what CIG are doing as it reflects to my game play, is an old meme of often putting the cart before the horse. Quality comes in many different forms but to me doing such things, (and these I am on the fence about at the moment), like MM before before fixing ship characteristics such as amour and component stats, physicalised cargo and removing local inventories before having proper ship and locker storage are as sloppy as software bugs. this goes to quality as far as I am concerned as well.
It's because Marketing steers development. Rather than CIG making the game and then Marketing selling the game. Marketing is coming up with cool ideas and the devs are having to make the game around it. Sandy (Gardener) Roberts is head of Marketing. 😂😂😂 That's literally a conflict of interest from a consumers perspective.
SC players go through a cycle: A person newly discovers the project > Get extremely excited about potential > spend a little money to get a 'decent' ship to start out with > Play for a while, learn the game, make some credits > Finally get tired of exploding for no reason due to either bugs, or griefing, neither of which ever get fixed over multiple version releases > Post some things on the Spectrum, hoping to bring attention and actually improve the CURRENT gameplay experience > SC white knights ruthlessly mock OP and tell them they just need to "git gud lol" > They uninstall the game and play the multitudes of other games already in their possession that ACTUALLY WORK > CIG loses any potential recurring profit from the player as they stop buying things > Player begins the endless 'waiting period,' not playing, but watching the occasional yearly update to see if things have gotten any more enjoyable to play, this stage can take an as-of-yet undetermined amount of time. > A new player discovers the project, and the cycle begins anew. I've been watching this happen for 10 years. There is a little 'more' game now. As in, there are more ships to buy that somewhat work in-game. If one of your ships has a bug keeping it from 100% functionality, it's better to melt or upgrade to another ship because waiting for it to be fixed is futile. Currently, two of my ships I own are incapable of firing their missiles... can't even switch to missile mode ever since 3.23 originally released, hasn't been fixed in any hotfixes or patches afterward. I don't think they ever even fixed the S5 center gimbal on the Mk.1 Hornet that has been broken for years when they switched to 3.23, they just started selling ANOTHER HORNET, the Mk.II, for players to buy. Basically, CIG RARELY fixes ANYTHING they break. You can wait for literally multiple years to go by before they fix something as trivial as not being able to select missile operator mode on multiple ships. They. Don't. Care. how bad the player experience is in the live build. In this way, they can continue to crank out ships for people to buy like an addiction, while drip feeding tiny bits of gameplay per year, and doing what seems like ZERO bug fixing. And because of the constant influx of new money from suckers, they're never forced to improve things or change their ways. I love the "Hey, when is this gonna get done?" line in the beginning skit. Like the meme: That's the funny part, it doesn't. What CIG fails to realize, is that the game would be exponentially more active and popular IF THEY MADE IT RUN BETTER. People would actually sink time into the game for over a month IF THE GAME WASN'T JUST A GIANT WASTE OF TIME GETTING GRIEFED OR RANDOMLY EXPLODING AND LOSING PROGRESS. They wouldn't have to dumb down the flight model with Master Modes so the game appeals to younger kids w/ their mommy's credit card, if the LIVE BUILD was actually worth spending any time in for people with jobs and lives. CIG really needs to start getting their shit together if they want to retain any semblance of good reputation and PR for when the release finally does come, if ever. Because if they don't, they are going to have a shitstorm on their hands with people wanting refunds they can't produce.
I was sitting, safe on the deck at Orison, with a load of Beryl to sell. I turned the engines off, stood up, and exploded for no apparent reason. That's gonna suck even harder in a minute here...
@@jinz0 Skill issue? More like a troll issue. Did the way the guy stood up after landing lack any skill? In this patch I have landed, shut my engines off and when getting up have had my ship flung back into the air and even has been flipped over on it's back. It's a known bug in this patch. This guy is not lacking any skill. You are lacking any ability to comprehend the problem.
I just discovered your channel and I enjoyed the video very much, thank you. I agree with many of your points here; my concern is that CI are already trying their best and working extra hard but are drowning in years worth of tech debt that is putting their progress in a choke hold. Your comment on missions for all existing professions also resonated with me as I've been saying that for years. There is no reason why someone can't come home from work, pull out their Starfarer and do some random NPC refueling missions. They would be easy to implement and give owners of that ship something to do. Even when Pyro and other systems arrive, it's not reasonable to think people are going to just sit and wait for others to maybe run out of gas; you need to have refueling and maintenance missions ready to go for them. There used to be plans to have little maintenance mission gameplay as well set up for space stations; I wonder what happened to those? They could easily put something like that together for stations as well as the distribution centres too. But of course, nothing matters much if we can't get out of our rooms or if we're getting killed by elevators. The servers MUST become more stable, it's as simple as that. On a non-game related note, your Spartan Shield tshirt reminds me that I have a Spartan obstacle race coming up soon. (I know it's not the same thing but the "Spartan" logo triggered my memory). Damn, time flies, I... probably should be out training, (but we both know I'm ship shopping - no judgement here ; ) Cheers o7
Welcome to the channel, Cornerboy! From what I heard, those maintenance missions are coming in 4.0 with the resource network gameplay. Refueling needs to be more vital in Pyro. And I'm hoping that they fix the bugs with refueling so that it's more usable. Also you and me both, I should be training a lot more than I do right now. Lol
What you've described here is what will get me back into the game. I don't need full feature complete, but just most everything in place, and then just working to complete all of it, with some overlap of bug fixing, then full on bug fixing into release. Most of all I just need to see some stability.
I hope that folks continue to be upbuilding and provide constructive feedback with their frustrations... we need the Devs to also have the drive to complete the game and strive for excellence as stated.
@@novalis791 I get the impression from watching ISC and SCL that these guys developing the game have the passion and drive. The lead cargo feature dev was practically in tears when he had to admit that he couldn’t get 3.24 features into the originally planned 3.23. I think they care a lot.
Agreed completely. They care about the game and getting things right. Their passion for the game clearly shows in a lot of ways. And I think they'll get to where they want to be at some point. Just will take a bit more time than some people want it to take.
i must be honest. i've been playing for 3 months now and i've hardly had any issues at all. the few thing i get is bugs like enemies not spawning or ships falling through the floor but other than that i've been having an blast playing. I started with a shitty mustang alpha and then bought a c1 (pledge) and grinded towards my corsair and then worked on from there to an inferno, hornet, gladius, vulture, mole, c2, roc and arrow. so ye it sucks some people dont have a good time but i can't relate to those people
Good video, and agreed. We may have some "luck" on this for 4.0 anyway. The project is at a point in development where more features are in (or waiting) than not present, and the server meshing as a feature itself may require CIG to fix a number of the quality of life issues we have been suffering. Regardless, it is a crucial time for the community to rally and help identify issues but also hold CIG to that standard you speak of.
I think the underlying issue is the funding model for the project. Yes, im sure they could work much faster if there were no live test game they had to keep up with, but I think they believe they can't go back now, otherwise people would lose faith in it. To them, the quarterly updates are their way of proving they are making progress while testing the gameplay mechanics. I do think it is a good idea to have players test the game regularly during development to avoid spending a ton of time and money on a terrible game on release. A large part of the cost is having to literally build server meshing (as well as other novel ideas) from the ground up. This is a whole new technology (to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong) that no game even attempted before SC. Honestly a goofy, yet I think good comparison is a program like the F35 JSF program. It was so ambitious and incorporated so many novel technologies that nobody even knew how much it would eventually cost to create. That being said, although it took longer and cost more, it is still one of the most successful fighter projects in history. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a huge laundry list of countries lining up to buy them. The fighter jet comparison has another point: jets are a series of compromises. Range, lethality, survivability, and low cost. Pretty much all engineering is this way really, you can only pick three of the four. I think video games are a similar set of compromises. Unfortunately, we cannot have the best of all worlds in a short timeline, it just doesn't work that way. Your suggestions in the video make all the sense in the world, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you want a more stable game with more game mechanics and gameplay loops you have to sacrifice something to achieve that. I think you alluded to accepting a longer development timeline, but that adds cost, which means more ship sales. More delays and added cost are two things that many backers don't want. Conclusion: Perhaps a good change could be an update every 6 months? But as other people have stated, how much money do you spend on bugs that come from systems you don't plan on using long term? What does everyone think of a 6-month timeline? I know it was a long and weird rant so thanks for reading lol.
When you introduce even a single line of code you can unknowingly introduce bugs . So if they polish the game every time they add anything they will never finish the game . They can't polish the game until it's content complete .When the game is finished then they can and will polish it . I have suggested for over four years now to "lock" the build we play . Polish it for maybe a year or even two then release another "locked build" for the backers to play . They will waist less time polishing and we will have a much more stable build to play .
Plenty of live services and MMOs out there add content on a very regular basis without their game breaking and being unplayable. The actual reality is that ppl are still giving them money even tho the alpha is a disaster, so they spend zero resources on quality and assurance. The suckers who pay them to play test their game for them are their only testers and they are not game developers, so they don't do nearly as good of a job as a paid employee
This is more less exactly what I say. Annual releases would give us the polish we would like to have, more features and cut the time to become feature complete.
You're right about a single line of code causing more issues. But there's plenty of games out there that introduce new patches consistently. I'm simply advocating for more thorough bug fixes and better server stability. Not complete polish
@@JamestheKilljoy The alpha isn't a "disaster", we are just finally making headway and people are seeing the brunt of it. If the game was a disaster in any shape or form, the game would of been shut down by now. As much as I can't stand the performance in the game at the moment to the point I don't even want to play, I can also see how much we have gained in just this year compared to previous years. Despite what people might think but 4.0 is releasing THIS YEAR, and not towards the end but probably around citcon if not before. We are just finally at the point we can release more content and more underlying systems all at once but in turn that's why the game is in such a state. Next year is going to be drastically different in how the game will run, 4.0 is going to be rough at first unless they work out the issues with server meshing, but it's going to get way better than it did the last 2 years. And comparing this game to other "live service games" is such a joke; you are either comparing it to games that are already finished and drip feed bug fixes and small amount of content, or you are comparing to games that release in early access horribly incomplete or broken and have to release a bug fix patch everyday just to get their game stable, but those games don't compare to the scale of SC. Each update in SC adds so much more than the last. i still believe that SC has got more content than some "released" games with a $60 price tag. It just doesn't even compare and trying to compare the game to such small projects is just a joke.
If more of the developers played SC from outside their studios, they'd experience the bugs and errors as much as we do, and then we'd see most of the things you mention in this video. I suspect until they do, we will not until after the game goes beta, or the funding drops, and the latter is likely first. The one thing CIG does on time reliably are sales events, and just imagine how good a spot we'd be in if they ran the PU even half of how they run ship sales.
I can agree about all the bugs but have a very different opinion or maybe perspective on the idea of wanting more polished patches. Now I am a software developer and I totally get the software development life cycle and my rant is if CIG didn't release 4 quarterly patches or didn't try to run a live game environment. New features would actually come much faster because they could focus on content and features without any polish at all! It would by far be the most direct route to the finish line not having to fully test, fix and polish 4 times a year. Huge amounts of time is waisted for short term gain because it can all break again after releasing another feature in the next patch. So what happens it you end up working or fixing the same things many times over and over again to support a live game environment. Now I love playing Star Citizen too and I'd be sad if they stopped releasing things completely but knowing how much time is spend fixing bugs that will surly need more attention again. I would totally be behind the idea of releasing annual patches. This would save so much time by leaving developers along to make new features over fixing already developed but buggy features. And then this annual patch could get more attention polish and fixes and be more enjoyable to play. But if you are suggesting more polished quarterly releases, you are dooming the game to take longer to develop and have fewer features each quarter.
It's entirely possible that while there might be a small team to add to each quarterly patch, they have more of their teamss work on the big picture. It could be the best of both worlds if they take that approach (similar to how most of their company has been focused on SQ42)
True, but given the crowdfunded nature of this project, they absolutely must continue raising more funds to keep the lights on and staff housed & fed to do the work. That means they do have to go through the trouble of keeping the LIVE instance running (if barely) and continue selling ships. It's just the reality. I think they do have some serious branching & merging issues that increase regressions which they should really strive to improve.
The current amount of content in the game is enough to have a fun time. Literally all they have to do is make it not a janky dumpster fire every minute of the day. I tried to use the med gun during a fire fight today and it just fell straight to the floor. Never in my life have I seen that in a game. How do you fuck up that bad?
you've never seen that in a game? falling through the floor? then you havent' been gaming long, in honesty..there are HUNDREDS of reasons as to WHY that could happen at that random moment....
@Ravage2734b Reading isn't your strong suit huh. I never said anything about falling through the floor. No I have never played a shooter where your gun flies out of your hand
Wait... we have NO IDEA what this game should be... neither do the Dev Team. Seriously, get ANY CIG DEV to give a 20 second elevator pitch, you'll get a word salad of nothingness. A game, any game, does a few things really well. A game is not made by throwing together a tonne of arbitrary and contradictory features. Proper thrust-based physics and full-scale orbiting planets that stream in BEFORE you drop out of QT, and players' hands coming out when you approach a usable would be a first start, for me.
I would give Feedback but im not in Evocati :/ Would like to see a change where the PTU is for all Open so everyone can test it early, not Evocati explusive for 2 months. Idk if this would help but I hope with 1.0 CIG has a new Standard for release and so we get safe all 2-3 Months a new Patch so the Game shapes up better and better every patch
@@Mr_Beaubles Yeah, and the feedback is good. There are people that Complain about Master Mode, that its Stupid, no skil etc.. Quick note: Star Trek and in Star Wars its the same: Shields are not up all the time, weapons are not up all the time. But people say "its not realistic for SC" - but all bigger Sci-fi Movies and Series have this - but anyway^^ At the end, there are the people that give real feedback, say MM need work and tuning. I like Master Mode, i give my feedback. Its not perfect and needs work but overall: A good step. But give feedback where they can work with and no simple "MM sucks" stuff :) At the end its CR Vision how he wants SC to be. And I have no problem with that overall. At the end people who dont like it can leave - there is no need to play a game that u dont like to play
CIG needs to hire actual play testers and play their own game. This process of having the players test for you, is not going to work anymore. Activity is dropping heavily due to the game being unplayable most patches
They have play testers. There's only a fee though. I truly believe they're not focusing on this more because they have their eyes set on the big goal of 1.0 and everything in between is just the play test until they get to release.
@@Hav0k well, in the meantime, players have their eyes set on playing actual games. servers are a mess again and active players has plummeted. they gotta make sure 4.0 is playable or it may be the last straw for a lot of players
@@Hav0k yeah i might be exaggerating. im just frustrated with the state of the game, so is every org i play with. im playing other stuff right now and taking a long break til 4.0
I get it. I think a lot of players are there right now. And honestly, taking a break is never a bad call. That's kinda why I've been playing other games.
The best business practices would be to do an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses, then build on your strengths while minimizing the harm from your weaknesses. CIG is weak in the game play department but very strong (unsurpassed, until recently) in the visual look and depth of game elements. They also have a passionate community how want to participate in realizing the vision originally presented. I got excited last fall when they announced "Star Engine" I, mistaking, hoped that they were pivoting in the direction of modding, or better yet, something comparable to UnReal Engine, which is moving in the direction of buying assets and building your own game. SC has all the building blocks to build many types of games. For example: If I could adjust the prices and availability of commodities I could make an interesting trading game, no new features need to be added, just mod level parameter settings. Give the community bases and space station components, and people will build interesting places to visit... etc.
I'm actually betting that modding is still the plan. They've developed so many tools that it's possible. It's gonna be pretty amazing when we get to the release of all of it
The visuals are what sells the game. CIG knows this. People look at the level of visual detail and assume that also means a corresponding level of game play detail. When the reality is that the game environment is actually quite small and most of the game detail within is largely cloned repetitiveness.
I agree with you. The problem is the game is bigger than the hardware used to run it. So CIG has to trim the game to the point where it can runs the new stuff. Fairly well. Server merging is supposed to fix this, but they havent publicly tried merging in a couple of years. No idea why. Seems to me it should be the #1 mechanic on the board.
They've been working hard to get the programming for it just right and only recently was able to achieve the levels they were hoping for. And with some of the public tests that we've had, it's gone fairly well in some tests. The whole thing is really promising, but we won't know until it's launched to the live servers
Spent an hour flying low over Microtech in an Arrow. Skimming over hills and zipping through trees. Then when strafing right over a ridge, a good 30 meters over with plenty of clearance I blow up for no damn reason and my screen shows my ship just hovering in the air and me dead for no damn reason. I was at one min loving this game and saying to myself that anyone who plays this game will love it too, to cursing at it and thinking WTF is this horse-shit?!? This is the experience we all have all the time for one scenario or another the result is the same. Yes! The QC (quality control) needs to be stepped up.
@@johnwilliams4198 just a question, have you thought about what might have caused this incident? And is it possible that it actually was not the game itself?
I discovered this game at 27 im now 37. I purchased a whole pc set-up just for this game. With ship's and PC im easily 10k+ in. I dont think I'll ever do this again for a game lol. Love the game just looking forward to 4.0 so i can play again
Damn you made me realise I was 23 when I backed it, and now I’m 30, married and have a 1.5 year old baby girl. If you would have told me back then that my very own baby would be sitting on my lap while I’m watching videos on how close a few basic features would still be struggling to release in the game, I would hysterically laugh at you and think you must be crazy. I’m sorry but I am the crazy one here.
@@dhwajgoyal lol you and me both. I never expected I'd be married with 4 kids by the time the game got to this point. But it's been a fun journey so far.
Hey Hav0k, nice video! I just don't think the game is at the point you want it, to start polishing, yet. At the moment, most of the server tech it at, or even stretched over it's limit. That's why we all suffer the very low Server FPS and awful latency. The very foundation to make it an MMO (Server meshing) is still in it's early infancy from first proof of concept late last year. Core technology like the game shaping Quanta, defining the very economy everything is dependent upon, still in early CONCEP.... All things, SQ24 does not need. Yet, SC's very existence depends upon... but, things you can't directly interact with as a player. In other words, you need to build the foundation of the house prior to choose the color of the carpet in the Master bedroom... And to all the folks chanting: XY years to develop a game is more than enough to develop a game... how would you know?? start your own... do better!
Glad you enjoyed the video! I agree with you. I'm mainly hoping things get progressively better with each patch. But yeah people are too loud about the fact that the game is still not done which I think is ridiculous
Been saying this for a while. What's the rush? Make it work all the time. It's already well past the point of preposterous on being over funded and late. Just lean into it. Working patches mean more players, more new players, more money rolling in. They need to embrace the live service at this point, I know others will disagree but having things playable for slower development doesn't seem like a massive ask to me. Great video as per dude. o7
Thanks, Red! They absolutely do need to embrace the live service. As I've said multiple times they don't even need to deliver a completely polished experience, they just need to progressively get better with each patch. Hopefully with the amount of bugs being fixed in 3.24 that this is the start. 4.0 needs to be better
Agreed. It's time. It's time for the new content to be more polished on release and not rushed to meet internal deadlines. The star map is beautiful, but not more useful than it was. Routing often fails due to server performance. The advertised features are missing. It's new, but not better. Master Modes is just a broken flight model because it's missing the tuning. The new cargo patch is lacking in basic features. It's a step backward from what we have and is going to impact every aspect of gameplay. It's going to make life miserable. Incomplete and broken features are the same as no feature. I know they need these systems to iterate on. I think we're at a point where they need to take the time to complete the feature before release. I would rather have waited until next year for the star map, flight model, instanced hangars, interactions, et al, if they were good on release. We've waited this long for 4.0, and we can wait another six months for the underlying tech to be done right.
I think if 4.0 comes out and we actually get server meshing working (barring a few weeks of growing pains), CIG is gonna lose a pretty big excuse for poor performance. I know we've still got vulkan multi-threading in the pipe, but I think the community is going to start losing patience (faster than usual) if the game is still largely unstable post 4.0.
I like your differencied take. But there are so many more professions/machanics to implement (like : Basebuilding, hacking, Data mining and transport, Exploration, passanger transport, repair...) first bevor we can even think about more polish. The Servers have to be on point to even have a usefull AI for passenger transport for example. Not even combat! Thats a whole other level. And everything relies on each other. So i cant see how polish should be a focus for now if we want a nicly playable game in the near future.
I can respect that opinion. Mind you I'm not advocating for it to be the main focus, just for things to progressively get better with each patch as I think it would really help.
Great video as always. I wonder if you have ever been to Spectrum? Because if you don't think the community is already complaining and moaning and demanding better out of CIG regarding everything wrong with the game in its current state, you should go have a visit some time lol
I have a hard time playing this game anymore. Everything takes so long to do and I’ve done everything the game has to offer and it’s just boring now. The only reason the servers are running better is because there’s no more than 60 people per server anymore. It’s a Ghost Town everywhere you go. The game is dying.
Polishing only makes sense when the feature is complete and will remain unchanged for a long time. Otherwise you will waste a lot of resources for repeated polishes.
@@Hav0k And I do not disagree with that :). Just docked my Conny in Port Tressler... got out of my seat .... immediatly started to suffocated and by the looks of the health circle burnded to death. So I understand everybodies complaints just to well. Unfortunately we will only get things fixed when CIG deems it worth doing so. But I acknowledge that not doing so also hurts their revenue. It is dancing on an edge.
I simply don't see them changing their behaviour. What we have now, this soup of uncertain design and unstable gameplay, is the level they find acceptable, and while the money keeps flowing in, there will be no incentive for them to change.
This is explicitly stated by them. As we're basically testers, the game is still in alpha. It's a fact of life that this isn't a traditional approach to development.
Honestly, probably not. The games just gotten more complex and Server Meshing is a massive part that will help fix a lot of issues. Honestly, the servers aren't usually all that bad. It's typically when they have events that they're the worst
The problem is the core game is not even finished and they are hitting limits. Will Server Meshing be the silver bullet? I am waiting patiently for the core gameplay to be entered. I visit star citizen in attempts to play seriously but get put off by bugs. I haven't really played in over 2.5 years. I do plan on visiting it again to see the progress but again there is really nothing holding my interest in the game and bugs just leave a bad taste... Only my imagination brings me back in hopes that some of that can become a reality. But all I find is disappointment. 3.34 i will visit again to see the hangers and changes. Lets hope for the best. Thank you for the video, this is what they need do. Focus on quality and core game mechanics.
What you're asking for won't really be practical or appropriate until the development phase moves from Alpha to Beta. If CIG decides to call 4.0 "Beta" then yes, we can insist on & expect more polish and higher quality & stability. Players who can't cope with the bugs & instability during the Alpha phase can & really should do something else with their time until Beta rather than complaining about what is the reality of software development. Most games, and definitely all games at this or similar level of complexity, aren't publicly accessable or even announced until much further along in development. GTA 6 for example has been in development for around the same amount of time as SC but with a much higher budget (est around $2 billion before marketing) and we've only seen anything significant about its content due to leaks. No way in hell is anybody in the public getting Alpha or even Beta access. Rockstar had the significant benefits of existing FAT revenue streams (GTA 5 Shark cards alone bring in about $1 billion per year), studios, staff, IP, and content based only on human life on a small portion of Earth... Not futuristic & alien sci-fi stuff on other worlds, all with the incredibly high fidelity we get in Star Citizen.
You're probably right about that. I'm honestly someone who can cope. But I would like servers to be more stable for 4.0 at the very least. That would be a win. But as I mentioned, we are all part of an alpha test. It doesn't matter if the game has been in alpha for 10 years. The game is extremely ambitious and there's a lot for them to do. GTA 6 also didn't require 2 or 3 game engine reworks. So it makes sense they're taking this long right now.
i think once the big things like server meshing is done then we'll see a new era of development because they won't have to focus so much on that one aspect and those people can be diverted to the other parts of the game
I'm fairly sure that CIG have stated before, that fixing many of the broken in-game mechanics is not a priority unless they're majorly game breaking. Their priories are with advancing the tech and introducing new game tech and mechanics. To keep fixing the bugs, would make no sense, as many fixed bugs will continue to appear, slowing down their progress. But currently, the game has turned into an unplayable mess. A mess that may turn away loyal and even new prospective backers. Their bottom line will suffer if they don't give the PU a little TLC. Their focus is now 4.0, which means that many new and persistent bugs will continue to persist. Unfortunately, it appears that we will have to deal with bugs for many years longer.
Yep. That was part of the same interview. It makes sense why they're not focusing on it, but I'd like a little bit more bug fixing and server stability more than anything.
@@Hav0k They absolutely need more bug fixing, even in Alpha. Many bugs happening at the moment do so without warning, and can mean that the hours spent mining, salvaging, or cargo hauling has all been a waste of time
Yep, their priorities are idiotic. I've had simple things like weapon mounts not gimbaling correctly, and/or missiles being unusable for multiple years! I've been a backer for 10 years, And the truth is, if the bug isn't gamebreaking enough to stop people from buying more ships every day, they won't even effing look at it. And there are so many of these known bugs, it makes the new player experience ESPECIALLY horrible, and some ships completely unusable. Remember how the Sabre Firebird missiles didn't work when it was released? Yah, I personally own two other ships that have nonfunctioning missiles. They fixed the one that was a reskin of the rarest ship in the game so it would keep selling, yet they didn't fix any of the other ships broken in the same way. Oh and, the missile count was too low on said new ship so it wasn't selling as well as they thought it should? IMMIDIATE BUFF. Despite what naive white-knights have been saying for years defending this shit, it has NEVER GOTTEN BETTER. Maybe if idiots stop making excuses and covering for what is purely bad game design priorities, they might just be forced to get their shit together... this DECADE.
I think it's 1.0 they are targeting with this idea of higher standards, more polish and a more streamlined experience - 4.0 and subsequent patches will likely have as much jank and bugs as the current ones. We will probably read more about this in Chris' promised "road to 1.0" plan that is supposedly coming in the next several months.
Yeah you're more than likely right. Which I'm honestly not really against. I'm just hoping each patch gets progressively better. Either way I'm still having fun.
The server-client-network stuff just isn't performant enough & CIG have never shown that they have the ability to solve it. I don't think the problem is entirely down to low server tick that will be resolved by server meshing and thus much lower entity counts and general loading - play Star Marine, it's still laughably janky, despite in theory being a small area with only a handful of players and no AI. This is simply the best they can do right now. If they stop to fix all this stuff now, nothing else will get done, development will be even more glacial.
I think the major problem with CGI is Chris never stops going off in all directions he can think of while dismissing the foundational problems that are killing this game. I recently came back after a few year break and was floored that the same bs bugs still exist. Elevators and hanger bays are still killing you off, NPC all stand in clusters, the "Economy" is nothing short of a punitive joke towards the player and is essentially Brexit is Space, it doesn't work. Chris rambles on about Death of a Spaceman... seriously Chris? Try playing the game sometime that is all your game consistently delivers, recovering from death is usually the bulk of your game play. They are probably years off from NPC assisted crew members to man your unfinished ships ship that still don't have the mechanics is place to use it as advertised. They need to step back from expanding and make what they already have playable and bug free or this project is doomed. They can't keep playing the alpha card at this point... 12 years and 700+ million..Hello? It's time to sht or get off the pot.
$700 million over 12 years really isn't as much for development of a game as you might think. And many people are treating this as a traditional game. The fact of the matter is it's not. The player base is part of the development as testers of a game that progressively grew in scope to where it is now because funding never stopped and producers aren't behind the scenes forcing things to be released by a certain date. I think you put too much fault on Chris. He's not in control near as much as you think given that Richard Tyrer is the lead developer for SC.
@@Hav0k Let's hope you're right, if 3.24 and 4.0 are a success it will certainly be worth the long wait if not I will probably be the beginning of a slow painful end.
Honestly, I'm tolerant about bugs... consider this kind of fault th-cam.com/video/0WrRunC9gEw/w-d-xo.html Also, release of Alpha 4.0? 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, you know where I'm getting at. But again, consider the game experience of having less than 1 minute from loading to CTD. What should I think of? What should I do?
You hush your face! Bugsmashers was one of the best shows. Not "the" best, but one of them. I honestly prefer it to star citizen live. In my opinion, Bugsmashers was at least always about the game. SCL is hit or miss between interviews and building assets that we will likely never see.
PLEASE NO!!! GOD PLEASE, NO!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I want to live enough to see this game released: don't give Chris the idea he can keep the ball rolling for "Higher Standards" They call SQ42 "feature complete" and CIG still doesn't have a flight model (MM is a bad joke) and no hint of Physics anywhere in the engine. What they need is to put their shit together and finalize something theg can actually deliver.
I don't think lowering the standards to appease the masses is an acceptable answer by any means. MM isn't a joke. It's just incomplete. The last few times the flight model was changed, there was always an outcry for the first little bit until they refined it. It will get there
It won’t happen because they can’t even decide what they are going to prioritize from one week to the next much less some long range plan they actually stick to to improve it.
So tired of everyone - either inside CIG, or content creators - telling me about what is going on "on the inside" of the game and how the future is all one big bright shiny penny for everyone. When the reality is that there is no future because, whatever it may or could be is, it is all currently sitting behind an insurmountable wall of jank. Don't tell me about anything about "the future of SC" that you cannot support with verifiable sources.
No point fixing current servers now, server meshing is coming in 4.0, after that they can start fixing it. However hopefully servermeshing will increase server fps.
After the changes in ship combat and the removal of the gimbals in weapons I left the game. Master mods is the worst crap they did. Sad part I can't get a refund 1300€ down the drain. After 10 years i can't support this any more.
They gotta start fixing their current issues and stop adding new content that brings new probably fix the current issues then make new content and fix the issues it has when you're building a house you don't start with the electrical then jump to the plumber then decide to make the foundation and then start the roof
Honestly, the amount of youtube content that is coming out for 4.0, is hyping it up to levels that the update simply won't reach... It's gonna be a clusterbugfuck as usual.
well their excuse was server meshing all the time ,,bla bla not possible without sv meshing bla bla again not possible,, now that we will have this feature there are 2 ways one they will start wroking sht like they are supposed to or invent another excuse like cig usually does sooo yea
I mean, it's a valid excuse. Why waste a ton of time tracking down issues with the server when it's temporary? I'm not concerned about it until Server Meshing is in. Then I'd like to see a bit more server stability
my friend how can u say Star Citizen has higher standards when nothing works game is full of lag and bugs and each update brings exploits and more bugs WHERE IS THE HIGHER STANDAR ? brain death human
I'm guessing you didn't read the video. Cause the topic is about how the game needs higher standards. Not how the game has higher standards now. Big difference.
Today we're diving into how i believe CIG should begin having higher standards for each release, starting with 4.0 and how we can possibly influence them to do so.
💯% agree with you on this video.
Your input towards the grander conversation of excellence with every patch goes a long way to bringing awareness to what the game needs to succeed at this point.
It's been a long slog for some backers and I think they deserve to finally be rewarded, and to some degree vindicated, with a stable, feature rich game.
I'm also concerned that everything has a breaking point, including backer patience and trust. Should the trust end among the "core" group, then that's it for SC.. let's hope we're far from that.
If CIG have taken this long to produce the SC we have today, while giving the majority of their (attention) to SQ42, then I personally can forgive how development of SC has gone this far BUT with SQ42 "wrapping", CIG needs to really start pushing development of SC while maintaining quality.
Hav0k, thanks for your excellent video AND no judging here but do tell.. which ship do have your eye on next.. ?
I'm looking at the Valkyrie.. I know, I know, it's in a terrible state, like most of my ships. I guess I buy a little too much with my heart..
@ea4857 I think we are far from that, to be honest. There's still many people that are extremely invested in the game. Myself being one of them.
Based on the fact that they've focused mostly on SQ42, I can definitely forgive the time it's taken. SQ42 was always meant to come first.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! I think I might have my eyes on the Polaris at some point. But that will be an in-game purchase for sure. The Legionaire is actually really awesome too.
@@Hav0kgotta admit the Polaris looks sweet. Isn't that a definite multi crew ship? I only have one pledged (truly) multi crewed ship - the Ironclad Assault which I may just upgrade or melt. I saw it and thought, hey.. I think I can get a lot of gameplay out of that hull! Let's see..
At this point I've pledged 11 (smaller) ships in my fleet and feel like I've covered most gameplay loops.. I love to dabble in all loops. Can't believe I've spent this much although no more than I might spend on my other hobby which I quit 4 years ago.
I do have a couple of doubled up fighter types (light/medium/heavy) but it'll allow me to share with friends or an org.
Really wish I'd have the time to grind for ships but due to my busy schedule, if I didn't buy ships I probably would own only one ship for a very very long time. I also suspect that when 1.0 rolls around, the ship economy will be adjusted and it'll take weeks to a few months of grind to own some of the smaller fighter types but I could be wrong.
@ea4857 yeah the Polaris is an amazing looking ship. It's probably my absolute favorite for sure.
12 years, $15000+ ... I'm 55, I hope I live long enough to play this game as a 1.0 and see my Javelin
I hear you. I want us all to see it before we die lol
@@Hav0k Pushing 68. They better hurry. 🤔
Just leave your account to your grand kids.
@@bobklk51I wonder how many people have died already that will never see a 1.0 release.
You did what now? YIKES!
I can handle the bugs, but the lag as of late has been almost unplayable. I can't stand it when I go to sit in my pilot seat it can take up to 1 or 2 minutes to sit or when I hop in a server and have to wait until the server leg stops so I can get out of bed
In the video, he talks about and implies that the game is a buggy mess because CIG is “rushing” that is so far from reality that it is a joke. It’s been 12 years. They’re not rushing anything they just have a bad approach to the design of the game.
Actually I'm pretty sure the wording I used was more along the lines of avoiding delays. This approach usually results in either pushing a patch that isn't ready to hit the deadline and also the removal of features. Which is accurate.
The bugs + performance issues stack bigtime
yeah the desync makes the game unplayable, I suspect they aren't really working on the networking issues atm because with 4.0 it will be all new code anyways
@@the_steamtrain1642 Exactly my thoughts too
really enjoyed your input on this.
subjective view from me, with what CIG are doing as it reflects to my game play, is an old meme of often putting the cart before the horse. Quality comes in many different forms but to me doing such things, (and these I am on the fence about at the moment), like MM before before fixing ship characteristics such as amour and component stats, physicalised cargo and removing local inventories before having proper ship and locker storage are as sloppy as software bugs. this goes to quality as far as I am concerned as well.
It's because Marketing steers development. Rather than CIG making the game and then Marketing selling the game. Marketing is coming up with cool ideas and the devs are having to make the game around it.
Sandy (Gardener) Roberts is head of Marketing. 😂😂😂
That's literally a conflict of interest from a consumers perspective.
SC players go through a cycle: A person newly discovers the project > Get extremely excited about potential > spend a little money to get a 'decent' ship to start out with > Play for a while, learn the game, make some credits > Finally get tired of exploding for no reason due to either bugs, or griefing, neither of which ever get fixed over multiple version releases > Post some things on the Spectrum, hoping to bring attention and actually improve the CURRENT gameplay experience > SC white knights ruthlessly mock OP and tell them they just need to "git gud lol" > They uninstall the game and play the multitudes of other games already in their possession that ACTUALLY WORK > CIG loses any potential recurring profit from the player as they stop buying things > Player begins the endless 'waiting period,' not playing, but watching the occasional yearly update to see if things have gotten any more enjoyable to play, this stage can take an as-of-yet undetermined amount of time. > A new player discovers the project, and the cycle begins anew.
I've been watching this happen for 10 years. There is a little 'more' game now. As in, there are more ships to buy that somewhat work in-game. If one of your ships has a bug keeping it from 100% functionality, it's better to melt or upgrade to another ship because waiting for it to be fixed is futile. Currently, two of my ships I own are incapable of firing their missiles... can't even switch to missile mode ever since 3.23 originally released, hasn't been fixed in any hotfixes or patches afterward. I don't think they ever even fixed the S5 center gimbal on the Mk.1 Hornet that has been broken for years when they switched to 3.23, they just started selling ANOTHER HORNET, the Mk.II, for players to buy.
Basically, CIG RARELY fixes ANYTHING they break. You can wait for literally multiple years to go by before they fix something as trivial as not being able to select missile operator mode on multiple ships. They. Don't. Care. how bad the player experience is in the live build. In this way, they can continue to crank out ships for people to buy like an addiction, while drip feeding tiny bits of gameplay per year, and doing what seems like ZERO bug fixing. And because of the constant influx of new money from suckers, they're never forced to improve things or change their ways.
I love the "Hey, when is this gonna get done?" line in the beginning skit. Like the meme: That's the funny part, it doesn't. What CIG fails to realize, is that the game would be exponentially more active and popular IF THEY MADE IT RUN BETTER. People would actually sink time into the game for over a month IF THE GAME WASN'T JUST A GIANT WASTE OF TIME GETTING GRIEFED OR RANDOMLY EXPLODING AND LOSING PROGRESS. They wouldn't have to dumb down the flight model with Master Modes so the game appeals to younger kids w/ their mommy's credit card, if the LIVE BUILD was actually worth spending any time in for people with jobs and lives. CIG really needs to start getting their shit together if they want to retain any semblance of good reputation and PR for when the release finally does come, if ever. Because if they don't, they are going to have a shitstorm on their hands with people wanting refunds they can't produce.
I was sitting, safe on the deck at Orison, with a load of Beryl to sell. I turned the engines off, stood up, and exploded for no apparent reason. That's gonna suck even harder in a minute here...
Skill issue
@@jinz0 Skill issue? More like a troll issue. Did the way the guy stood up after landing lack any skill? In this patch I have landed, shut my engines off and when getting up have had my ship flung back into the air and even has been flipped over on it's back. It's a known bug in this patch. This guy is not lacking any skill. You are lacking any ability to comprehend the problem.
3.24 will actually make it hurt more
@@reverendzombie72 i think he was being sarcastic anyway that is the way i took it 😅
@@reverendzombie72 bro relax, he's joking
I just discovered your channel and I enjoyed the video very much, thank you.
I agree with many of your points here; my concern is that CI are already trying their best and working extra hard but are drowning in years worth of tech debt that is putting their progress in a choke hold. Your comment on missions for all existing professions also resonated with me as I've been saying that for years. There is no reason why someone can't come home from work, pull out their Starfarer and do some random NPC refueling missions. They would be easy to implement and give owners of that ship something to do. Even when Pyro and other systems arrive, it's not reasonable to think people are going to just sit and wait for others to maybe run out of gas; you need to have refueling and maintenance missions ready to go for them.
There used to be plans to have little maintenance mission gameplay as well set up for space stations; I wonder what happened to those? They could easily put something like that together for stations as well as the distribution centres too. But of course, nothing matters much if we can't get out of our rooms or if we're getting killed by elevators. The servers MUST become more stable, it's as simple as that.
On a non-game related note, your Spartan Shield tshirt reminds me that I have a Spartan obstacle race coming up soon. (I know it's not the same thing but the "Spartan" logo triggered my memory). Damn, time flies, I... probably should be out training, (but we both know I'm ship shopping - no judgement here ; ) Cheers o7
Welcome to the channel, Cornerboy! From what I heard, those maintenance missions are coming in 4.0 with the resource network gameplay.
Refueling needs to be more vital in Pyro. And I'm hoping that they fix the bugs with refueling so that it's more usable.
Also you and me both, I should be training a lot more than I do right now. Lol
What you've described here is what will get me back into the game. I don't need full feature complete, but just most everything in place, and then just working to complete all of it, with some overlap of bug fixing, then full on bug fixing into release. Most of all I just need to see some stability.
Understandable for sure. And perhaps 4.0 may bring the beginning of stability. We can only hope
I hope that folks continue to be upbuilding and provide constructive feedback with their frustrations... we need the Devs to also have the drive to complete the game and strive for excellence as stated.
I absolutely agree with you!
@@novalis791 I get the impression from watching ISC and SCL that these guys developing the game have the passion and drive. The lead cargo feature dev was practically in tears when he had to admit that he couldn’t get 3.24 features into the originally planned 3.23. I think they care a lot.
Agreed completely. They care about the game and getting things right. Their passion for the game clearly shows in a lot of ways. And I think they'll get to where they want to be at some point. Just will take a bit more time than some people want it to take.
i must be honest. i've been playing for 3 months now and i've hardly had any issues at all. the few thing i get is bugs like enemies not spawning or ships falling through the floor but other than that i've been having an blast playing. I started with a shitty mustang alpha and then bought a c1 (pledge) and grinded towards my corsair and then worked on from there to an inferno, hornet, gladius, vulture, mole, c2, roc and arrow. so ye it sucks some people dont have a good time but i can't relate to those people
don't worry. It hasn't happened to you yet. But it will.
Youre a newb, what do you expect, the first year is great with the game.
Good video, and agreed. We may have some "luck" on this for 4.0 anyway. The project is at a point in development where more features are in (or waiting) than not present, and the server meshing as a feature itself may require CIG to fix a number of the quality of life issues we have been suffering. Regardless, it is a crucial time for the community to rally and help identify issues but also hold CIG to that standard you speak of.
It doesn't even have be a major difference. Just progressively better with each patch.
I think the underlying issue is the funding model for the project. Yes, im sure they could work much faster if there were no live test game they had to keep up with, but I think they believe they can't go back now, otherwise people would lose faith in it. To them, the quarterly updates are their way of proving they are making progress while testing the gameplay mechanics. I do think it is a good idea to have players test the game regularly during development to avoid spending a ton of time and money on a terrible game on release.
A large part of the cost is having to literally build server meshing (as well as other novel ideas) from the ground up. This is a whole new technology (to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong) that no game even attempted before SC.
Honestly a goofy, yet I think good comparison is a program like the F35 JSF program. It was so ambitious and incorporated so many novel technologies that nobody even knew how much it would eventually cost to create. That being said, although it took longer and cost more, it is still one of the most successful fighter projects in history. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a huge laundry list of countries lining up to buy them.
The fighter jet comparison has another point: jets are a series of compromises. Range, lethality, survivability, and low cost. Pretty much all engineering is this way really, you can only pick three of the four. I think video games are a similar set of compromises. Unfortunately, we cannot have the best of all worlds in a short timeline, it just doesn't work that way.
Your suggestions in the video make all the sense in the world, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you want a more stable game with more game mechanics and gameplay loops you have to sacrifice something to achieve that. I think you alluded to accepting a longer development timeline, but that adds cost, which means more ship sales. More delays and added cost are two things that many backers don't want.
Conclusion: Perhaps a good change could be an update every 6 months? But as other people have stated, how much money do you spend on bugs that come from systems you don't plan on using long term? What does everyone think of a 6-month timeline?
I know it was a long and weird rant so thanks for reading lol.
The thing I would like to see is server stability and performance, this will elevate gaming experience so much.
Game engine needs vastly improved hidden surface removal AND inactive entity culling.
At the next citizencon everyone should just stand on their chairs and T pose.
Just like last year. 😅
At least T posing has been happening less and less
Love your takes. Totally agree!
When you introduce even a single line of code you can unknowingly introduce bugs . So if they polish the game every time they add anything they will never finish the game . They can't polish the game until it's content complete .When the game is finished then they can and will polish it . I have suggested for over four years now to "lock" the build we play . Polish it for maybe a year or even two then release another "locked build" for the backers to play . They will waist less time polishing and we will have a much more stable build to play .
They still would need to test that "locked build" with players at a bigger scale. And they need data.
Plenty of live services and MMOs out there add content on a very regular basis without their game breaking and being unplayable. The actual reality is that ppl are still giving them money even tho the alpha is a disaster, so they spend zero resources on quality and assurance. The suckers who pay them to play test their game for them are their only testers and they are not game developers, so they don't do nearly as good of a job as a paid employee
This is more less exactly what I say. Annual releases would give us the polish we would like to have, more features and cut the time to become feature complete.
You're right about a single line of code causing more issues. But there's plenty of games out there that introduce new patches consistently.
I'm simply advocating for more thorough bug fixes and better server stability. Not complete polish
@@JamestheKilljoy The alpha isn't a "disaster", we are just finally making headway and people are seeing the brunt of it. If the game was a disaster in any shape or form, the game would of been shut down by now. As much as I can't stand the performance in the game at the moment to the point I don't even want to play, I can also see how much we have gained in just this year compared to previous years. Despite what people might think but 4.0 is releasing THIS YEAR, and not towards the end but probably around citcon if not before. We are just finally at the point we can release more content and more underlying systems all at once but in turn that's why the game is in such a state.
Next year is going to be drastically different in how the game will run, 4.0 is going to be rough at first unless they work out the issues with server meshing, but it's going to get way better than it did the last 2 years.
And comparing this game to other "live service games" is such a joke; you are either comparing it to games that are already finished and drip feed bug fixes and small amount of content, or you are comparing to games that release in early access horribly incomplete or broken and have to release a bug fix patch everyday just to get their game stable, but those games don't compare to the scale of SC. Each update in SC adds so much more than the last. i still believe that SC has got more content than some "released" games with a $60 price tag. It just doesn't even compare and trying to compare the game to such small projects is just a joke.
If more of the developers played SC from outside their studios, they'd experience the bugs and errors as much as we do, and then we'd see most of the things you mention in this video. I suspect until they do, we will not until after the game goes beta, or the funding drops, and the latter is likely first. The one thing CIG does on time reliably are sales events, and just imagine how good a spot we'd be in if they ran the PU even half of how they run ship sales.
I can agree about all the bugs but have a very different opinion or maybe perspective on the idea of wanting more polished patches. Now I am a software developer and I totally get the software development life cycle and my rant is if CIG didn't release 4 quarterly patches or didn't try to run a live game environment. New features would actually come much faster because they could focus on content and features without any polish at all! It would by far be the most direct route to the finish line not having to fully test, fix and polish 4 times a year. Huge amounts of time is waisted for short term gain because it can all break again after releasing another feature in the next patch. So what happens it you end up working or fixing the same things many times over and over again to support a live game environment. Now I love playing Star Citizen too and I'd be sad if they stopped releasing things completely but knowing how much time is spend fixing bugs that will surly need more attention again. I would totally be behind the idea of releasing annual patches. This would save so much time by leaving developers along to make new features over fixing already developed but buggy features. And then this annual patch could get more attention polish and fixes and be more enjoyable to play. But if you are suggesting more polished quarterly releases, you are dooming the game to take longer to develop and have fewer features each quarter.
It's entirely possible that while there might be a small team to add to each quarterly patch, they have more of their teamss work on the big picture. It could be the best of both worlds if they take that approach (similar to how most of their company has been focused on SQ42)
True, but given the crowdfunded nature of this project, they absolutely must continue raising more funds to keep the lights on and staff housed & fed to do the work. That means they do have to go through the trouble of keeping the LIVE instance running (if barely) and continue selling ships. It's just the reality.
I think they do have some serious branching & merging issues that increase regressions which they should really strive to improve.
@@PaulMEdwards absolutely agree with you
The current amount of content in the game is enough to have a fun time. Literally all they have to do is make it not a janky dumpster fire every minute of the day. I tried to use the med gun during a fire fight today and it just fell straight to the floor. Never in my life have I seen that in a game. How do you fuck up that bad?
you've never seen that in a game? falling through the floor? then you havent' been gaming long, in honesty..there are HUNDREDS of reasons as to WHY that could happen at that random moment....
@Ravage2734b Reading isn't your strong suit huh. I never said anything about falling through the floor. No I have never played a shooter where your gun flies out of your hand
Wait... we have NO IDEA what this game should be... neither do the Dev Team. Seriously, get ANY CIG DEV to give a 20 second elevator pitch, you'll get a word salad of nothingness. A game, any game, does a few things really well. A game is not made by throwing together a tonne of arbitrary and contradictory features. Proper thrust-based physics and full-scale orbiting planets that stream in BEFORE you drop out of QT, and players' hands coming out when you approach a usable would be a first start, for me.
Wrong. Its a space sim. Pretty simple kiddo, Planets not streaming in is a you problem, upgrade your computer.
I would give Feedback but im not in Evocati :/ Would like to see a change where the PTU is for all Open so everyone can test it early, not Evocati explusive for 2 months. Idk if this would help but I hope with 1.0 CIG has a new Standard for release and so we get safe all 2-3 Months a new Patch so the Game shapes up better and better every patch
Not like they listen to the feedback, anyways. *cough*master modes*cough**cough*
@@Mr_Beaubles Yeah, and the feedback is good. There are people that Complain about Master Mode, that its Stupid, no skil etc.. Quick note: Star Trek and in Star Wars its the same: Shields are not up all the time, weapons are not up all the time. But people say "its not realistic for SC" - but all bigger Sci-fi Movies and Series have this - but anyway^^
At the end, there are the people that give real feedback, say MM need work and tuning. I like Master Mode, i give my feedback. Its not perfect and needs work but overall: A good step. But give feedback where they can work with and no simple "MM sucks" stuff :) At the end its CR Vision how he wants SC to be. And I have no problem with that overall. At the end people who dont like it can leave - there is no need to play a game that u dont like to play
Your background is awesome! What is your setup for that? Green screen or do you change your background with an app? Thanks for any info ahead of time!
I just use Nvidia broadcast. It's pretty effective at removing any background and replacing it with whatever background you want.
CIG needs to hire actual play testers and play their own game. This process of having the players test for you, is not going to work anymore. Activity is dropping heavily due to the game being unplayable most patches
They have play testers. There's only a fee though. I truly believe they're not focusing on this more because they have their eyes set on the big goal of 1.0 and everything in between is just the play test until they get to release.
@@Hav0k well, in the meantime, players have their eyes set on playing actual games. servers are a mess again and active players has plummeted. they gotta make sure 4.0 is playable or it may be the last straw for a lot of players
@@JamestheKilljoy I agree for the most part. I don't think it will be the last straw, but it will hurt the game for a while.
@@Hav0k yeah i might be exaggerating. im just frustrated with the state of the game, so is every org i play with. im playing other stuff right now and taking a long break til 4.0
I get it. I think a lot of players are there right now. And honestly, taking a break is never a bad call. That's kinda why I've been playing other games.
The best business practices would be to do an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses, then build on your strengths while minimizing the harm from your weaknesses. CIG is weak in the game play department but very strong (unsurpassed, until recently) in the visual look and depth of game elements. They also have a passionate community how want to participate in realizing the vision originally presented.
I got excited last fall when they announced "Star Engine" I, mistaking, hoped that they were pivoting in the direction of modding, or better yet, something comparable to UnReal Engine, which is moving in the direction of buying assets and building your own game. SC has all the building blocks to build many types of games. For example: If I could adjust the prices and availability of commodities I could make an interesting trading game, no new features need to be added, just mod level parameter settings.
Give the community bases and space station components, and people will build interesting places to visit... etc.
I'm actually betting that modding is still the plan. They've developed so many tools that it's possible. It's gonna be pretty amazing when we get to the release of all of it
The visuals are what sells the game. CIG knows this. People look at the level of visual detail and assume that also means a corresponding level of game play detail. When the reality is that the game environment is actually quite small and most of the game detail within is largely cloned repetitiveness.
I agree with you. The problem is the game is bigger than the hardware used to run it. So CIG has to trim the game to the point where it can runs the new stuff. Fairly well. Server merging is supposed to fix this, but they havent publicly tried merging in a couple of years. No idea why. Seems to me it should be the #1 mechanic on the board.
They've been working hard to get the programming for it just right and only recently was able to achieve the levels they were hoping for. And with some of the public tests that we've had, it's gone fairly well in some tests.
The whole thing is really promising, but we won't know until it's launched to the live servers
Spent an hour flying low over Microtech in an Arrow. Skimming over hills and zipping through trees. Then when strafing right over a ridge, a good 30 meters over with plenty of clearance I blow up for no damn reason and my screen shows my ship just hovering in the air and me dead for no damn reason. I was at one min loving this game and saying to myself that anyone who plays this game will love it too, to cursing at it and thinking WTF is this horse-shit?!? This is the experience we all have all the time for one scenario or another the result is the same. Yes! The QC (quality control) needs to be stepped up.
@@johnwilliams4198 just a question, have you thought about what might have caused this incident? And is it possible that it actually was not the game itself?
@@MotherNature26lol
Spartan Shield, nice! I remember reading about it in the SIPR lounge in 2012 lol
And 12 years later it's still going. 😂
@@Hav0k As long as everyone has a reflective belt, things should be fine.
@@vik12D 🤣🤣🤣 I'm so glad I've made it this far in my time in the army without ever wearing one
I discovered this game at 27 im now 37. I purchased a whole pc set-up just for this game. With ship's and PC im easily 10k+ in. I dont think I'll ever do this again for a game lol. Love the game just looking forward to 4.0 so i can play again
Same here! I was 25 when I backed. Now I'm 37 and have dropped too much money. I can't wait to get into 4.0 at all.
Damn you made me realise I was 23 when I backed it, and now I’m 30, married and have a 1.5 year old baby girl. If you would have told me back then that my very own baby would be sitting on my lap while I’m watching videos on how close a few basic features would still be struggling to release in the game, I would hysterically laugh at you and think you must be crazy. I’m sorry but I am the crazy one here.
@@dhwajgoyal lol you and me both. I never expected I'd be married with 4 kids by the time the game got to this point. But it's been a fun journey so far.
@@Hav0k literally the same as me. I backed in December of 2012... I'm now 38 as of Friday... 😅
@sudonix5923 quite an interesting journey I have to say.
Hey Hav0k, nice video!
I just don't think the game is at the point you want it, to start polishing, yet.
At the moment, most of the server tech it at, or even stretched over it's limit. That's why we all suffer the very low Server FPS and awful latency.
The very foundation to make it an MMO (Server meshing) is still in it's early infancy from first proof of concept late last year.
Core technology like the game shaping Quanta, defining the very economy everything is dependent upon, still in early CONCEP....
All things, SQ24 does not need. Yet, SC's very existence depends upon... but, things you can't directly interact with as a player.
In other words, you need to build the foundation of the house prior to choose the color of the carpet in the Master bedroom...
And to all the folks chanting: XY years to develop a game is more than enough to develop a game... how would you know??
start your own... do better!
Glad you enjoyed the video! I agree with you. I'm mainly hoping things get progressively better with each patch. But yeah people are too loud about the fact that the game is still not done which I think is ridiculous
Been saying this for a while. What's the rush? Make it work all the time. It's already well past the point of preposterous on being over funded and late. Just lean into it. Working patches mean more players, more new players, more money rolling in. They need to embrace the live service at this point, I know others will disagree but having things playable for slower development doesn't seem like a massive ask to me. Great video as per dude. o7
Thanks, Red! They absolutely do need to embrace the live service. As I've said multiple times they don't even need to deliver a completely polished experience, they just need to progressively get better with each patch.
Hopefully with the amount of bugs being fixed in 3.24 that this is the start. 4.0 needs to be better
Agreed. It's time. It's time for the new content to be more polished on release and not rushed to meet internal deadlines. The star map is beautiful, but not more useful than it was. Routing often fails due to server performance. The advertised features are missing. It's new, but not better. Master Modes is just a broken flight model because it's missing the tuning. The new cargo patch is lacking in basic features. It's a step backward from what we have and is going to impact every aspect of gameplay. It's going to make life miserable.
Incomplete and broken features are the same as no feature. I know they need these systems to iterate on. I think we're at a point where they need to take the time to complete the feature before release. I would rather have waited until next year for the star map, flight model, instanced hangars, interactions, et al, if they were good on release. We've waited this long for 4.0, and we can wait another six months for the underlying tech to be done right.
I think if 4.0 comes out and we actually get server meshing working (barring a few weeks of growing pains), CIG is gonna lose a pretty big excuse for poor performance. I know we've still got vulkan multi-threading in the pipe, but I think the community is going to start losing patience (faster than usual) if the game is still largely unstable post 4.0.
I like your differencied take. But there are so many more professions/machanics to implement (like : Basebuilding, hacking, Data mining and transport, Exploration, passanger transport, repair...) first bevor we can even think about more polish. The Servers have to be on point to even have a usefull AI for passenger transport for example. Not even combat! Thats a whole other level. And everything relies on each other. So i cant see how polish should be a focus for now if we want a nicly playable game in the near future.
I can respect that opinion. Mind you I'm not advocating for it to be the main focus, just for things to progressively get better with each patch as I think it would really help.
Great video as always. I wonder if you have ever been to Spectrum? Because if you don't think the community is already complaining and moaning and demanding better out of CIG regarding everything wrong with the game in its current state, you should go have a visit some time lol
completely echoed my feelings.
Were you in the Army? I'm a Marine infantryman myself
Still am at the moment. Debating on how much longer I wanna stay in. Lol
Im at 20 years and 10 months in the army doing 6 more then I'm out.
That's definitely a long time. I wish I had joined when I was younger. I'd be almost to 20 years by now.
@@COMMANDERHAWK22 Officer or enlisted?
I have been saying this for a long time . thanks for making the video
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is all true, but also their plan, so we’re probably good.
I agree. I think, for the most part, they'll really buckle down. I just thought it was a good conversation to bring up
I have a hard time playing this game anymore. Everything takes so long to do and I’ve done everything the game has to offer and it’s just boring now. The only reason the servers are running better is because there’s no more than 60 people per server anymore. It’s a Ghost Town everywhere you go. The game is dying.
It will be perfect soon (tm).
Polishing only makes sense when the feature is complete and will remain unchanged for a long time. Otherwise you will waste a lot of resources for repeated polishes.
I don't disagree. I'm not necessarily saying to focus on it primarily, but we could use a little bit more bug fixing and better server stability
@@Hav0k And I do not disagree with that :). Just docked my Conny in Port Tressler... got out of my seat .... immediatly started to suffocated and by the looks of the health circle burnded to death. So I understand everybodies complaints just to well. Unfortunately we will only get things fixed when CIG deems it worth doing so. But I acknowledge that not doing so also hurts their revenue. It is dancing on an edge.
Both the devs' perspective and the backers' perspectives are valid. I'm just hoping for it to progressively get better with each patch released
I simply don't see them changing their behaviour. What we have now, this soup of uncertain design and unstable gameplay, is the level they find acceptable, and while the money keeps flowing in, there will be no incentive for them to change.
This is explicitly stated by them. As we're basically testers, the game is still in alpha. It's a fact of life that this isn't a traditional approach to development.
i dont even care about sq42 i want to PU thats where all the fun will be
I'll buy it to support it. Heck, I might even finish it, but I hear what you're saying, there may be many of us that aren't actually here for SQ42.
Waiting on 4.03.
Not sure if there is a correlation but since closing their US offices we’ve seen a decline in server quality and bigger bugs.
Honestly, probably not. The games just gotten more complex and Server Meshing is a massive part that will help fix a lot of issues. Honestly, the servers aren't usually all that bad. It's typically when they have events that they're the worst
The problem is the core game is not even finished and they are hitting limits. Will Server Meshing be the silver bullet? I am waiting patiently for the core gameplay to be entered. I visit star citizen in attempts to play seriously but get put off by bugs. I haven't really played in over 2.5 years. I do plan on visiting it again to see the progress but again there is really nothing holding my interest in the game and bugs just leave a bad taste... Only my imagination brings me back in hopes that some of that can become a reality. But all I find is disappointment. 3.34 i will visit again to see the hangers and changes. Lets hope for the best. Thank you for the video, this is what they need do. Focus on quality and core game mechanics.
You cannot see the Legatus Pack. You obviously have not spent enough!
🤣🤣🤣 yeah you right lol
So Havok you have a Praetorian Pack? LOL
Lol no. I wish! That was mostly a joke. I've spent significantly less than that
What you're asking for won't really be practical or appropriate until the development phase moves from Alpha to Beta. If CIG decides to call 4.0 "Beta" then yes, we can insist on & expect more polish and higher quality & stability.
Players who can't cope with the bugs & instability during the Alpha phase can & really should do something else with their time until Beta rather than complaining about what is the reality of software development.
Most games, and definitely all games at this or similar level of complexity, aren't publicly accessable or even announced until much further along in development.
GTA 6 for example has been in development for around the same amount of time as SC but with a much higher budget (est around $2 billion before marketing) and we've only seen anything significant about its content due to leaks. No way in hell is anybody in the public getting Alpha or even Beta access. Rockstar had the significant benefits of existing FAT revenue streams (GTA 5 Shark cards alone bring in about $1 billion per year), studios, staff, IP, and content based only on human life on a small portion of Earth... Not futuristic & alien sci-fi stuff on other worlds, all with the incredibly high fidelity we get in Star Citizen.
You're probably right about that. I'm honestly someone who can cope. But I would like servers to be more stable for 4.0 at the very least. That would be a win. But as I mentioned, we are all part of an alpha test. It doesn't matter if the game has been in alpha for 10 years. The game is extremely ambitious and there's a lot for them to do.
GTA 6 also didn't require 2 or 3 game engine reworks. So it makes sense they're taking this long right now.
i think once the big things like server meshing is done then we'll see a new era of development because they won't have to focus so much on that one aspect and those people can be diverted to the other parts of the game
I'm fairly sure that CIG have stated before, that fixing many of the broken in-game mechanics is not a priority unless they're majorly game breaking. Their priories are with advancing the tech and introducing new game tech and mechanics. To keep fixing the bugs, would make no sense, as many fixed bugs will continue to appear, slowing down their progress. But currently, the game has turned into an unplayable mess. A mess that may turn away loyal and even new prospective backers. Their bottom line will suffer if they don't give the PU a little TLC. Their focus is now 4.0, which means that many new and persistent bugs will continue to persist. Unfortunately, it appears that we will have to deal with bugs for many years longer.
Yep. That was part of the same interview. It makes sense why they're not focusing on it, but I'd like a little bit more bug fixing and server stability more than anything.
@@Hav0k They absolutely need more bug fixing, even in Alpha. Many bugs happening at the moment do so without warning, and can mean that the hours spent mining, salvaging, or cargo hauling has all been a waste of time
Yep, their priorities are idiotic. I've had simple things like weapon mounts not gimbaling correctly, and/or missiles being unusable for multiple years! I've been a backer for 10 years, And the truth is, if the bug isn't gamebreaking enough to stop people from buying more ships every day, they won't even effing look at it. And there are so many of these known bugs, it makes the new player experience ESPECIALLY horrible, and some ships completely unusable. Remember how the Sabre Firebird missiles didn't work when it was released? Yah, I personally own two other ships that have nonfunctioning missiles. They fixed the one that was a reskin of the rarest ship in the game so it would keep selling, yet they didn't fix any of the other ships broken in the same way. Oh and, the missile count was too low on said new ship so it wasn't selling as well as they thought it should? IMMIDIATE BUFF. Despite what naive white-knights have been saying for years defending this shit, it has NEVER GOTTEN BETTER. Maybe if idiots stop making excuses and covering for what is purely bad game design priorities, they might just be forced to get their shit together... this DECADE.
I think it's 1.0 they are targeting with this idea of higher standards, more polish and a more streamlined experience - 4.0 and subsequent patches will likely have as much jank and bugs as the current ones. We will probably read more about this in Chris' promised "road to 1.0" plan that is supposedly coming in the next several months.
Yeah you're more than likely right. Which I'm honestly not really against. I'm just hoping each patch gets progressively better. Either way I'm still having fun.
GG
The server-client-network stuff just isn't performant enough & CIG have never shown that they have the ability to solve it.
I don't think the problem is entirely down to low server tick that will be resolved by server meshing and thus much lower entity counts and general loading - play Star Marine, it's still laughably janky, despite in theory being a small area with only a handful of players and no AI.
This is simply the best they can do right now. If they stop to fix all this stuff now, nothing else will get done, development will be even more glacial.
What’s the point of talking about 4.0 if we don’t have 3.24 yet ???
Because it's the next big patch that's coming up. And I wanted to talk about this topic. So I did.
I just want servers that work and AI that are functional. We can't test the game if the game doesn't work.
For the most part it does. But it still happens
Buzzcutpsycho said it best: Star Citizen is for retired boomers
I think the major problem with CGI is Chris never stops going off in all directions he can think of while dismissing the foundational problems that are killing this game. I recently came back after a few year break and was floored that the same bs bugs still exist. Elevators and hanger bays are still killing you off, NPC all stand in clusters, the "Economy" is nothing short of a punitive joke towards the player and is essentially Brexit is Space, it doesn't work. Chris rambles on about Death of a Spaceman... seriously Chris? Try playing the game sometime that is all your game consistently delivers, recovering from death is usually the bulk of your game play. They are probably years off from NPC assisted crew members to man your unfinished ships ship that still don't have the mechanics is place to use it as advertised. They need to step back from expanding and make what they already have playable and bug free or this project is doomed. They can't keep playing the alpha card at this point... 12 years and 700+ million..Hello? It's time to sht or get off the pot.
$700 million over 12 years really isn't as much for development of a game as you might think. And many people are treating this as a traditional game. The fact of the matter is it's not. The player base is part of the development as testers of a game that progressively grew in scope to where it is now because funding never stopped and producers aren't behind the scenes forcing things to be released by a certain date. I think you put too much fault on Chris. He's not in control near as much as you think given that Richard Tyrer is the lead developer for SC.
@@Hav0k Let's hope you're right, if 3.24 and 4.0 are a success it will certainly be worth the long wait if not I will probably be the beginning of a slow painful end.
Honestly, I'm tolerant about bugs... consider this kind of fault th-cam.com/video/0WrRunC9gEw/w-d-xo.html
Also, release of Alpha 4.0? 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, you know where I'm getting at. But again, consider the game experience of having less than 1 minute from loading to CTD. What should I think of? What should I do?
You hush your face! Bugsmashers was one of the best shows. Not "the" best, but one of them. I honestly prefer it to star citizen live. In my opinion, Bugsmashers was at least always about the game. SCL is hit or miss between interviews and building assets that we will likely never see.
Lol that's fair 🤣
Prepare for disappointment
This was incredibly well worded. BuzzcutPsycho could learn a thing or two from your video here.
I appreciate that! I'll have to take a look at his video. I bet he has some very solid viewpoints as well.
@@Hav0khe was talking about how bs the game is rn and I agree with him
Master modes sucks
They only focus in making new ships without fixing any bugs
PLEASE NO!!!
GOD PLEASE, NO!!!
NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
I want to live enough to see this game released: don't give Chris the idea he can keep the ball rolling for "Higher Standards"
They call SQ42 "feature complete" and CIG still doesn't have a flight model (MM is a bad joke) and no hint of Physics anywhere in the engine.
What they need is to put their shit together and finalize something theg can actually deliver.
I don't think lowering the standards to appease the masses is an acceptable answer by any means. MM isn't a joke. It's just incomplete.
The last few times the flight model was changed, there was always an outcry for the first little bit until they refined it. It will get there
It won’t happen because they can’t even decide what they are going to prioritize from one week to the next much less some long range plan they actually stick to to improve it.
So tired of everyone - either inside CIG, or content creators - telling me about what is going on "on the inside" of the game and how the future is all one big bright shiny penny for everyone.
When the reality is that there is no future because, whatever it may or could be is, it is all currently sitting behind an insurmountable wall of jank.
Don't tell me about anything about "the future of SC" that you cannot support with verifiable sources.
If you're tired of seeing it, maybe stop watching it?
FIX THE SERVERS
No point fixing current servers now, server meshing is coming in 4.0, after that they can start fixing it. However hopefully servermeshing will increase server fps.
Exactly my thoughts. Server meshing stability polish will be important in 4.0.
After the changes in ship combat and the removal of the gimbals in weapons I left the game. Master mods is the worst crap they did. Sad part I can't get a refund 1300€ down the drain. After 10 years i can't support this any more.
They gotta start fixing their current issues and stop adding new content that brings new probably fix the current issues then make new content and fix the issues it has when you're building a house you don't start with the electrical then jump to the plumber then decide to make the foundation and then start the roof
Honestly, the amount of youtube content that is coming out for 4.0, is hyping it up to levels that the update simply won't reach...
It's gonna be a clusterbugfuck as usual.
Probably true. This was anything but hype given we're still waiting for 3.24 to come out
Hmm . Cause it’s got none right now ?
Go watch what Buzz cut psycho posted yesterday. It was a master class on the reality of what star citizen is.
Will do! Thanks for this! I always appreciate his perspective.
Can you link that plz
This feels like a script from chatgpt.
Fascinating, as this was all handwritten by myself.
Above all we need good server performance...
Pls no more 4server fps in 4.0
Honestly I doubt we'll have that problem
Are you being serious?
well their excuse was server meshing all the time ,,bla bla not possible without sv meshing bla bla again not possible,, now that we will have this feature there are 2 ways one they will start wroking sht like they are supposed to or invent another excuse like cig usually does sooo yea
I mean, it's a valid excuse. Why waste a ton of time tracking down issues with the server when it's temporary? I'm not concerned about it until Server Meshing is in. Then I'd like to see a bit more server stability
my friend how can u say Star Citizen has higher standards when nothing works game is full of lag and bugs and each update brings exploits and more bugs WHERE IS THE HIGHER STANDAR ? brain death human
I'm guessing you didn't read the video. Cause the topic is about how the game needs higher standards. Not how the game has higher standards now. Big difference.
Stop giving them money until they fix that god awful, sorry excuse for a game and make it enjoyable.
It’s the ONLY thing that will change their MO.