• dustyData@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding.

    This thing is a scam, and you’re all being taken for chumps. The only worse fraud than SC is buying Fatalities on Mortal Kombat.

    • echo64@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There is this tiny company called Nihon Falcom. They make this game series called Trails that I adore. they have like three programmers work on each entry.

      In the time since Star Citizen was announced they have released:

      • The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails 2012
      • Ys: Memories of Celceta 2012
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2013
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II 2014
      • Tokyo Xanadu 2015
      • Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana 2016
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV
      • Ys IX: Monstrum Nox 2019
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
      • The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II
      • Ys X: Nordics

      as well as a bunch of ports of older games to modern platforms and localizing them to the west. All of these are worth playing and some of these were GOTY material for me.

      Its good to quantify how much time has passed, and how much you can get done with a smaller budget and focused scope.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I play mostly smaller games, and am very patient with my gaming habits. Haven’t bought a AAA game in a very long while. Still follow these kind of news because they trend set the whole industry and encroach everywhere with bad practice as big publishers represent the majority of the industry releases and also the grossest revenue.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s now a season bundle. But it was $10 per fatality x 3. One for Halloween, one for Thanksgiving, and one for Christmas. That was a total of $30 for a whole minute of cut-scenes. They successfully Overton it, apologized and now it’s $10 for the three scenes. But yeah, now buying Fatalities is a thing, look forward for your Easter Fatality edition and an extra Bunny skin version for only $4.99.

    • orrk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      imagine a bigger game with great graphics and a whole ton of technical innovation, AND have people be paid well, that is for chumps

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    After a decade and an astronomical amount of money spent, this thing is still in pre-alpha. People have left school, got married, have kids, played and forgotten No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous, and now Starfield, and there is still no Star Citizen.

    It’s time to accept that Star Citizen will NEVER be released, because what Chris Roberts is selling is “dream as a service” which can be anything you want it to be, and one that never has to end for as long as the “game” is still in development.

    The moment an actual product is released is the moment the flow of money will stop.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I once saw a comment on a SC update video from a guy who claimed to have backed up SC as a teenager, went to college, entered the industry, was part of a team from start to shipping a video game. twice, and still SC is in pre-alpha. He said that now as a veteran of the industry he realizes that SC is a scam. Like, 99% of the stuff they hyped as their envelope breaking new tech for video games, has already been done by dozens of games at a fraction of the cost.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, server meshing at the scale they did it has been possible for years. The issue is overlapping it at the planetary and multi system scale for hundreds of thousands of people and all of their inventory objects simultaneously.

        They essentially just handed these objects to a master server that has to monitor all of them, instead of having each client server doing it individually. It’s like a backup technology that can respawn all tracked items in the event of a server failure. They’ve basically just added redundancy. I don’t foresee performance being improved when this overlord monitoring server inevitably gets taxed to capacity tracking everyone’s shit.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Dude, it was a random comment on a YT video about 8 months ago. I have zero chance of finding it again. It’s just an anecdote. So, as much as I hate to say it, just…trust me bro.

    • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s not entirely true, if they ever went full release there’s still a fuck ton they can charge players for and milk. It’s just their Kickstarter that won’t make money anymore.

      That being said you’re correct, they’ve essentially pioneered the concept of “Game Development as a Service” in the same way live service and early access games are doing now regularly.

      Personally even if SQ42 launches I don’t think they’ll get the persistent universe up to their original vision for another ten years. They absolutely aren’t going to hit their 100 solar system metric from the 2011/12 era. I’d be surprised if there ends up being more than ten at launch, but it would surprise me even more if the game ever has an official launch at all.

      What’s most likely is that this game will remain in early access Alpha forever, allowing it to shield itself from criticism while taking it’s sweet time constructing the game they said would release back in 2016 originally. That will allow them to justify keeping the Kickstarter open forever while also spending most of their time creating and selling new ships in a game that doesn’t even have gameplay loops for most of them. Then they’ll occasionally drop a new star system or loop to keep the hopes of players up.

      This new dynamic server meshing technology they just showcased (at the tech demo level of complexity) is their only hope for making the game playable. The performance of the game isn’t due to stress on your rig as much as networking latency because their servers are overloaded. If they can scale it to the planetary, and eventually multi system level, then they might have something worth picking up. I’m not going to pay for it until that game exists, though. Which it probably never will.

    • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Pre-alpha” would be if they hadn’t started coding. It’s alpha. There’s something you can play, it’s just buggy and incomplete and thus not beta. Alpha for this long has enough stigma, you don’t need to exaggerate like that.

      • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Technically true, you can play the current build of a game that’s been in perpetual development with distractive milestones continually added so as to distract you from the promises made in years past.

      • infinitepcg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s so frustrating to see people in this thread posting objectively false statements about SC. Yes, it’s behind schedule and yes it suffers from scope creep. But it’s not a scam and it’s not vaporware. People who give them money know exactly what they are getting into. You can buy a ship now and fly it immediately. You can spend hundreds of hours in the game in it’s current state. Even pointing out that it’s playable gets downvotes.

    • froggers@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      don’t judge until you’ve seen the dynamic cloth physics! that is what everyone wants, right?

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I actually will only play a game with realistic sweat and tears. Oh, they are hard at work on that?! Well FINALLY, I’m SO fucking glad. Thank you SO much, Robert’s Space Industries. You guys are definitely NOT complete hacks.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been part of some amateur game dev projects and SC has the vibe of an amateur project where the devs are constantly focusing on whatever catches their fancy at the moment, going back and tinkering with things they’ve already made, and sort of aimlessly scope creeping. There’s nobody to strongarm them into writing, much less following a game design document.

      All of that is intuitive to me to understand.

      Then there is “the dream” that is being sold to people who want this type of game. That level of very specific fandom is also easy to understand, at least from a distance. People get super into all kinds of games and spend outsized amounts of money and time.

      Star Citizen is like the perfect storm of these elements.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you don’t know what you want except a nebulous dream, you can’t tell that you’re dissatisfied with what you actually have, and don’t realize that what you’re doing isn’t actually getting you anything. This applies to both the devs and the fans.

      • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Think part of it is that Chris Robert’s comes from a time when games couldn’t be patched.

        • SSTF@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No, there’s really no excusing this game’s development. If anything, Robert’s should have learned from Freelancer to have a tight core product that’s actually shippable.

          At this point Internet nerds are locked into throwing money at Star Citizen’s development, making it the closest thing humanity has achieved to a perpetual motion machine.

      • Furbag@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        SC wouldn’t run on any console currently in production, and even if it could/did, you’d own a console several generations newer than what it was meant to play on by the time it officially released.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        why should they care about consoles, exactly? Especially when we know that a bunch of licensing requirements from consoles are literally giving control of your project to Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo

        • PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s relevant because it’s the most expensive game ever, yet it only targets one platform. The second most (and others) can at least justify some of their expense because they’re targeting multiple platforms which does have a cost.

          • orrk@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            ok AND? the fact that it’s the most expensive game ever already clashes with the policy of publishing with console service providers, there are drawbacks beyond cost to porting software to console, and I will remind you that both Microsoft and Sony are Running AMD64_X86 architecture so porting isn’t the difficult part.

            it’s not my fault if you fall for console ports justifying price.

              • orrk@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                what exactly am i “not educated on”?

                because both the Xbox series X/S and the PS5 use AMD Zen2+RDNA2 with Zen2 being a chipset that uses the X86_64, fundamentally there is nothing much separating the two, and I will remind you the if at times buggy, Cyberpunk ports where done in just a few months towards the end of the project that spanned many years.

                or maybe you meant it in regard to Microsoft and Sony having a significant amount of policy control towards licensing anything that is release on their consoles?

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Shenmue! Shenmue is on that list, wholly crap that almost as embarrassing the people here saying that the SCs fans are not being scammed. And anyone who thinks this is a scam must be brainwashed/part of a hivemind.

  • TIMMAY@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I dont have the energy to care about this game, just like I dont have the energy to care about George RR Martin or Patrick Rothfuss never finishing their products either.

    • deus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Writers, no matter how good, are just regular people. I have much higher expectations and not as much patience towards a game studio with infinite money and no released games whatsoever in over a decade.

      • TIMMAY@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, that’s a good point, and I didnt mean to directly disparage them, only to say that at the decade point or so I just dont have the capacity to keep anticipating something entertaining. That was also my biggest reason for just not giving a shit about the avatar movie sequel. Kid me would have been all in, now I just dont care enough to spend the time money and effort on it

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      God damn fucking Patrick Rothfuss… What a beautiful story to likely never have an ending. Don’t read into it, anyone… Not unless he releases that last book.

    • PDFuego@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same. Until these things are physically in my hand I’ve got plenty of other stuff to get on with, what’s the point of wasting years chasing them. It’s the same with any marketing really, give me a title, pitch & release date, I’ll see you then.

  • JdW@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I am not proud to say I was an original backer, but luckily only for like 25 bucks.

    It became clear after a year or two it was vaporware. even if a product ever comes out it’ll not be what I backed originally, which was Privateer TNG. So I stopped following the game, never played any of the tech demo’s and just shake my head warily when I see news articles like this. Bernie Madoff is in jail for basically the same thing. How can people still support this travesty.

    • Rogers@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Calling it vaporware is a bit silly they have over 500 employees and have tech nobody else has you can play right now. If you have an original package you can sell it on the gray market for much more than you paid for it. I understand it has had troubled development but you don’t know what you are talking about.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        What does the number of employees have to do with not having a finished product while also being the highest funded game in history? By this logic I am sure since FTX had 650 employees they must be all above board, if that was all some ponzi scheme they why the staff?

      • JdW@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        troubled development

        This is the biggest understatement of the year.

        you don’t know what you are talking about

        EXCUSE me? I was an original backer, I know EXACTLY what I backed. If you like what Star Citizen is doing then enjoy yourself. But do not tell me what was promised to me and what is being delivered now has ANY bearing on each other. Beacuse it does not.

        • Rogers@lemmy.ml
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          Are you aware they had a backer vote on the direction of the game? It was on if they were going to have stretch goals after the original KS pitch. 94% of the votes went to changing the game into something bigger (more features added). I understand it sucks for people that wanted the smaller more realistic game but they lost the vote. And again you can sell your ship for more than you paid, sometimes way way more. Should they have ignored the vote that was that overwhelming?

  • TheKracken@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I finally tried this game and holy shit is it terrible. The UI is janky and unintuitive. The movement is slow and stiff or sonic on crack and nothing in-between. The frame rate is terrible even on a decent machine with appropriate settings. Just overall a bad experience. I don’t care if it’s still “In development” get your fundamentals right before you go adding more shit.

    • pancakes@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      People think you can slap on an “in development” sticker to anything and absolve it of all criticism.

    • Alimentar@lemm.ee
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      I have no proof but I’m convinced it’s some sort of money laundering. Especially when they released the $30,000 DLC bundle to get everything

    • Rogers@lemmy.ml
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      Why would they have over 500 employees? There’s plenty of valid complaints but why would they have so many employees if it was truly intended has vaporware?

  • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I dumped $60 into this like… 12 years ago I think? I knew it was a Chris Roberts scam but was willing to take a chance on modern freelancer.

    How the fuck are people still pumping money into this? How is this not been exposed as a government or criminal front?

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    1 year ago

    Sometimes I wish Fdev had done a better job of updating elite dangerous and really putting in effort for cleaning up mechanics issues.

    But then I see stupidity like this and realize I am so much better off lmao. At least I have a 1:1 milky way game to play whenever I want.

    • iegod@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Elite is great but too damn shallow. And don’t get me started on odyssey. The game did not need space legs jankps.

  • FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I honestly feel like they should just release Squadron 42 now and then do Star Citizen. Let us have the ships and combat in an Ace Combat style game just in case Star Citizen never release.

  • ExfilBravo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Star Citizen players and Escape from Tarkov players. Both think their game will be finished before they are copied/cloned by a faster/better studio.

    • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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      This has already happened with Tarkov. Tarkov has been copied and cloned, but none of them are nearly as popular. Call of Duty didn’t even really come close, and that’s AAA. The game has already been around for 7 years. You would think someone had the time to make a better extraction shooter by now, but no one has. I honestly wish they would hurry up, because Tarkov is a mess from a netcode and performance perspective, it’s just great in the game design department.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’d argue DMZ was a better (or at least more casual) extraction shooter than Tarkov, I enjoyed it more than the cycle frontier at least.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          I prefer Tarkov just a bit, but I honestly really liked dmz too. It wasn’t bad at all. Not nearly as deep as Tarkov, but it didn’t need to be. It had actually decent netcode and hit reg compared to the mess that EFT is. It’s kind of a shame that the mode wasn’t more popular, but thats partially due to the playerbase being so divided between multiplayer and warzone already. I’m still hopeful that they can improve it in the future.

          • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’d rather them just update the MW3 zombies mode, I’m having a great time with it. It’s a really fun combination of DMZ style gameplay with the zombies from CW “Outbreak.” Hopefully they expand the types of missions and put special events into it.

  • Defaced@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I literally can’t play this game, my PC has 16GB of RAM and it runs out of free memory after like 10 minutes and crashes to desktop. When your “fix” is to just buy more RAM or increase your page file size, then your game is a fucking scam. I understand new games require more powerful hardware, but this is Amazon lumberyard ffs.

    • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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      It’s not even that new anymore. A 1080ti was tip of the spear graphics technology when this game first became “playable.”

    • LordKitsuna@lemmy.world
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      It’s actually not lumber yard anymore, it started from that but they’ve Rewritten most of it. And they literally show you the code and such during their like 2+hr devs videos. It’s never going to release but the technology is actually genuinely impressive.

      Sadly 16GB just isn’t much anymore. Windows alone will happily eat 4, steam sometimes 2 for no reason (usually not but can happen when it’s web process leaks) games like icarus claim minimum recommendation is 24.

      Which is absolutely insane and developers need to get their shit together but it’s just the way things are going.