this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
223 points (98.7% liked)

Games

32905 readers
1679 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Maggoty 55 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Star Citizen is in this picture. They added hunger and dehydration to a space exploration, cargo, and fighting game.

[–] setsneedtofeed 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh boy. Time for an 800 comment long flamewar about Star Citizen. I'm ready.

[–] Maggoty 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm proud to be the one to start the fire this time. To be clear I do really want a good game out of all this.

[–] setsneedtofeed 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Personally, I think Star Citizen is shallow and pedantic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's just a scam though isn't it? 💣💣💣

[–] Maggoty 5 points 2 months ago

They're doing way too much work for it to be a scam. Irresponsible, naive, badly managed, sure. It can just be a bad project.

[–] setsneedtofeed 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Its an educated wish.

[–] Maggoty 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It is, it's also in alpha still. If they were claiming beta in this state I'd be more worried rather than just mad they keep adding stupid shit instead of going full optimization. They have a game, they just need to get it out the door and worry about content in future releases. It's like the painter who can't call a painting finished.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

After what feels like 20 years, it still being in alpha should worry you more than if this current state was called a beta.

[–] Maggoty 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yes and no. On the other side they've essentially rebooted development something like 3 or 4 times. So there's a chance it comes up roses.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For other games that would be described as development hell

[–] Maggoty 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yup, I acknowledge that it's in development hell.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Hell is a crucible that produces gods and ash.

[–] Moc 1 points 2 months ago

Do the developers want to create a god, or are they happy to take the money and let it crumble to ash?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

There is "this game needs some more baking in the oven" and then there is "let's stick it in the oven and forget about it, hopefully it'll get incinerated and we can take everyone's money".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Oh well if they've only started four times then that's fine. It's only a problem if they do it 20 times right, then we worry, but 4 times, nah, that's standard.

[–] Maggoty 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying this is normal. Why are you so hellbent on making me look like I am?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why you so hell-bent on defending fraud?

[–] Maggoty 1 points 2 months ago

I don't know who pissed in your cheerios this morning but it wasn't me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

It’s like trying to trace an outline of a fractal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They can claim whatever they want. But if it's publicly available then it's a beta regardless of what arbitrary name they give it.

If it was alpha it should be free.

[–] Cypher -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The industry definitions of alpha/beta disagree with you.

Words have meaning and you’re using them wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You are correct words do have a meaning. A weird thing for you to bring up since you're the one incorrectly applying labels here.

Alpha products are available only for internal review, they are not available for public release they are not intended to be viewed by the general populace.

If you're charging people money for it then it can't be an alpha because now it's an external product not an internal sample.

[–] Cypher 1 points 2 months ago

In video games development, and more broadly in software development, Alpha state refers to a feature incomplete and largely untested state and is unrelated to internal/external sales, review, testing or release.

Alpha software is not thoroughly tested by the developer before it is released to customers.

While outside of recent trends, particularly in crowd funded games development, alpha releases to customers for paid software are less common they do occur and don't have any bearing on the alpha state of the software.

In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon for proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions.

Further

A feature-complete (FC) version of a piece of software has all of its planned or primary features implemented but is not yet final due to bugs, performance or stability issues. This occurs at the end of alpha testing in development.

And for Beta

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete but likely to contain several known or unknown bugs

I am both a qualified software developer, and have worked in the video games industry. I hope you have learnt something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

[–] Maggoty -4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry bud you're just wrong on that one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's been in development hell for over 10 years it's not going anywhere slowly. They barely even have a product.

[–] Maggoty 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Okay? But it's still definitely an alpha.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Okay whatever you need to say to justify it to yourself.

This game came out before I went into university I've now graduated and could have completed a doctorate and it still wouldn't have been in beta yet. Is the development studio near black hole or something what's going on here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] setsneedtofeed 1 points 2 months ago
[–] dodos 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I really feel there would be a market for something like star citizen without all the realism stuff that gets in the way of the gameplay. I'm a backer, and when I can get to playing the game it's fun, but finding my way to the launch pad after every two years break when I'm trying to checkup on progress sucks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're talking about No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous. The whole point of Star Citizen is the realism.

Drag thinks hunger mechanics in a spaceship game are too much, though.

[–] Maggoty 12 points 2 months ago

Same here, I loved the idea of a walk on space game I could play with friends. I loved the idea of ground side fights and boarding actions.

But now we've got some kind of super high fidelity survival game. If you can even run it it's far more akin to an first person POV EVE.

[–] yamanii 5 points 2 months ago

Literally any other space game.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Years ago I made a space game that was basically, Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, but with spaceships. I made it way too complicated and basically only I could play it, but I've often thought that it was a good basis for a game if only I made it less stupid.

I cannot believe nobody has made a space game since, where being the master of your ship is the whole goal. Basically Euro truck simulator in space. One of the nice things about that game is that all the gamey stuff is just handled by menus so that you can actually get to the experience without having to wander around a supplemental environment that doesn't really add anything to the experience.

[–] slumberlust 1 points 2 months ago

Space truckers came out this year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'll be "that guy" but according to Chris Roberts (the guy who owns CIG that is making the game) star citizen is supposed to be a "space life" game. It's not an "arcade game" where there is a specific game type it is built around. You're supposed to just be a dude/dudette living your life out in space and do what you want which can include all the things you mentioned. I personally want that very much. There are a million games out there that do the basic space pew pew thing or mining, but nothing like a life sim.

There's going to be more than just hunger and dehydration, they built toilets and showers into some ships for a specific reason not just atheistics lol

[–] Maggoty 9 points 2 months ago

Yeah, the problem is it wasn't sold as a space life game a decade ago. And there's a vast gulf between space life sim and actually having to eat/pee. It was already controversial when he said capital ships wouldn't despawn so you'll have to hide it and keep a 24/7 watch to make sure it isn't stolen. A game isn't supposed to be a job, there's got to be a happy medium there.