this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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Star Citizen

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A repost, for true and honest discussion (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by doopen to c/[email protected]
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A very popular post criticizing the current state of 3.24 which has since gone missing (under the pretense of "brigading") - what better platform to continue the open and uncensored discussion on than Lemmy?

Original post: Here we go again. I deleted Star Citizen some months ago because I was tired of endless bugs, server issues, invisible asteroids, the Hull-C appearing in random places, and many other "beautiful" things Star Citizen could offer.

I thought, "Okay, let's wait for the next patch; maybe there will be improvements." (Silly me.) And yesterday, I installed it again.

The real greatness of Star Citizen developers is their unique ability to create more bugs in each new version than there were before.

First, the cargo elevators. After a couple of minutes of playing, I lost my first container, which fell through the floor.

After some painful minutes, I managed to load my 8 SCU container with some stuff from Orison and brought it to Seraphim. I placed the container into the elevator's grid and sent the elevator down.

And... my container vanished inside the greedy station. I searched for it in various interfaces for some time without any luck, and then I gave up. "Okay, let's do some bounty missions," was my next idea.

I accepted the ERT mission around Yela, and as you can guess, that was broken too. No mission marker appeared for the bounty. Maybe they decided to make the game so realistic that we have to find bounties in asteroid belts without any clues. But no, it’s just another bug.

"Okay then, maybe the cargo missions work?" So I accepted the trial haul mission to deliver 11 SCU from Seraphim to Orison. And guess what? Nothing worked again. The warehouse or the elevator had no idea of any mission. :)

So, we got another broken release. Even more things are broken, and new things simply don’t work. This is the start of a new cycle. Now, the backers will scroll through the spectrum, waiting for another "magic" release that will fix everything.

So basically, that’s how Star Citizen works.

And the "Shit of the Year" award goes again to Star Citizen.

I'm a developer myself and work in a company with a revenue of $7.0B in 2023. We created and support the API that is used by millions of US citizens. We create bugs as well—this is the unfortunate part of development. But people will simply stop paying if our API becomes too buggy or if we introduce more bugs than we fix with every new release. Because people are not idiots to pay for something broken.

That, of course, is with the exception of the most dedicated Star Citizen fans who are so loyal that they will downvote this post while eating a pile of shit from SC developers. Bon appétit, fellas. :)

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[–] osprior 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, if you're not able to see through the issues and understand the underlying vision at this time then take a break. Everyone who has put any money into it has seen something in there, but the state of the game wanes and waxes, just wait longer if this is still not the patch for you.

I don't know if server meshing will be the magical fix, but personally I play this game maybe 6 weeks a year for a whole stint, but enough bugs that I need to take a break, and then finally jump back in when I'm ready.

It's not healthy to allow yourself to death spiral in frustration, just don't think about it for a good while, and then check in where it's at then.

The game is in active development, and I can tell you as both a regular software developer, and a games developer - games are a completely different beast, and generally come together at the very last moment even on the best projects.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think this is what makes the game seem less shit to me. I didn't back the game because I wanted Chris Roberts' fever dream to become a reality, I backed the game because I wanted to play the alpha. I know this thought process won't help original backers since they basically just pre orded the finished product and didn't want this buggy mess, but knowing I was paying for a buggy alpha before even getting the game seems to have made it a lot more enjoyable for me.

I have also been very lucky with the bugs this patch. The only severe bug I've encountered is the new hauling missions not working. I know that Orison hangars are bugged as well, because I was ferrying people up to sepharim in my aurora lol.

[–] Korinthenkacker 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Games are a software project, nothing more, nothing less.

Idiots like jared try to deny this and come up with tactics trial and error as normal part of the development process.

If you develop software with trial and error, you are already on a wood way (germans used to say). If you need to summon the "games are special" vibe you dont care about software engineering the slightest and your output will be pure shit on many occasions.

[–] osprior 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Sounds like you've never worked on a game. All software is developed with some level of trial and error, and if you were really a software engineer you'd know that.

Games involve art design, sound design, systems design, and game design. Most software involves a single design philosophy trying to reach a specific objective. Software you can usually take a look at early and with caveats get an idea how it will work together. Games you can't do that with so easily - that's why there's a specific term for it called a vertical slice.

You wouldn't need a vertical slice if you could just look at any point of the game being developed and get an idea where it's going.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that you often can't be sure if a design will work or will fall flat, software is generally less volatile than that.

[–] krimson 3 points 2 months ago

Same here. Discovered the game a few years ago, subscribed and bought some ships. But I still see SC as a tech demo at this point and not something I can play all year around. I see its potential and hope they pull it off but until that time I have no reason to put more time into it other than checking out a new patch every now and then.

Hoping for a beta within the next two years, if not I will probably lose interest completely.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

That is a fascinating experience and launch for 3.24. Being evocati, I tested this update, watched it progress and mature.

That being said, none of these issues existed in the test builds. By the end of the release cycle, evocati was ROBUST.

I'm wondering if these issues are caused by extreme load on the servers with everyone hopping on to see the update

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

Uninterested 3rd party, but maybe the game could sustain such a long development cycle by licensing some of the new technologies they've developed to other game devs.

Maybe they are worried someone would complete their project before they do.

Best of luck to all citizens, of the stars and of the earth.

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

This is in progress, see the video showcasing the engine at the last citizencon

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

They cannot sell the engine - even if they have changed it so much. BUT: They could sell the tools they created. Basically it would work like this:

  • engine is free (kind of open source)
  • you will be using AWS
  • you get all the stuff like meshing et al for free (tied to AWS)
  • the tools that generate stuff or manage stuff will be sold by CIG

So you could use the engine and create game without paying CIG a dime but you do this at a high price (doing everything manually) which limits the size of the game you can create with all manual labour. If you want to construct something like the size of Starfield you either license the CIG tools or you fail.

You also could design the stuff you need for MMO being not part of the engine (would makes the task more complicated as you cannot fit the engine into what you need). Maybe possible but greately increases the complexity (but also will increase the money you could draw off these features).

DONT FORGET: To sell something, it must work. The current bug shit is very difficult to sell. Its not obvisious if the engine works and the devs at CIG are total idiots that create all the bugs on top of the working engine OR if the engine itself is bugged.

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

Why is engine free?

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

I'm in that boat as well. I backed around a decade ago and while I haven't made it to the chairman's club, I'm still embarrassed by how much I've put into this dumpster fire due to the fomo and ever looming price increases on stuff. I basically don't play anymore, but I follow the patch notes and occasionally drop into the testing chat or subreddit and see what the latest is.

The main arguments I see from people are that it's in alpha and that x or y was never promised (or wasn't promised by a certain time) and that's all bullshit. Yes, the game is in active development. Yes, bugs are going to be created and slip through testing. Yes, scope changes and things need to be reworked. Yet year after year after year CIG has shown how incapable they are at squashing bugs properly while still adding more features which just compounds onto the underlying problems. As for the feature promises, they make a big deal about x or y coming around a certain time. Is it a promise? No, that would be insane, but they feed the community what they want to hear with targets, build that hype and take in money, then last minute it's oh, we've gotta push it back, BUT IT'S COMING DON'T WORRY!! Really, what a surprise you guys ran into issues with yet another thing and had to push your projections out yet again. Every year it's the same cycle. How long has 4.0 been on the horizon? I also found it a bit insulting when Jared went on ISC (IIRC) not too long ago and was like "we never promised anything, that's the communities fault for getting too hyped." Like broooo, you guys intentionally drive the hype and then blame us when we get excited??

The project has been poorly managed for years and I don't expect it to get better. I truly hope they succeed because it really has the potential to be something special and ground breaking (at least as far are the server meshing tech goes) but I'm done supporting them in any way. I've handed over way too much money. I've wasted countless hours trying to work around the bugs that plague almost every single patch. And all the times I tried to defend them online just made me look like a clown as they continued to pump buggy builds out one after another. Eventually, you just can't find a reason to stand up for them because you feel like you're enabling bad behavior. Unfortunately, the wonder and awe the game used to inspire is long gone for me. It's been a really disappointing ride watching the one game I really wanted get mismanaged the way that it has.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

For what it's worth, the build worked perfectly in evocati before release. I think these issues are caused by server load/lag with every man and his dog logging in to test the new update

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

All worked fine in the PTU just before LIVE release as well

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

I haven't played the game in like...6+ months, and I gotta say it's great to get away.

There's plenty of good, polished games, and Star Citizen will get worse before it gets better due to "all the stuff" in the wings waiting for 4.0.

The game will not get better as long as the universe is run on one server. 4.0 is a requirement for a good game, and even that won't be good out the box.

So I agree with osprior – don't worry about it. Do other things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Very buggy

[–] Korinthenkacker 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

First you MUST change you point of view: Star Citizen is a non quality environment.

This means, that developers can push any shit untested to LIVE. This results in stuff not working because its untested and it contains many bugs.

If you cannot accept this, I advise you not to play on .0 patches because the shit is unbearable.

Next thing: because they dont care about quality, you should expect, that only the new stuff has a slight chance of working (mainly because they fix their shit when it arrives at .1 - if these lazy bastards have enough time to provide .1 - just look at 3.23.2 ...)

If you follow the development of SC, you might get aware that they have begun to tackle the end game stuff, like meshing and all the other stuff they need to have if they want a MMO. Problem here is, that this stuff is complicated and with their normal effort putting out shit and let players determine if it works, there is only a slow speed possible. Also with constantly putting out untested shit, you might want to work on many things at the same time to get SOMETHING done after the years.

You see: as stuff gets more complicated, they cannot develop stuff for multiple years like they did in the past, they shit it out as soon as it compiles and use the players to find all the stuff that is not working. This does not create much fun in the "playable alpha" I can tell you (recently clowns like jared try to shape the reality into "LIVE" is also a test environment because "its alpha, bro" and their "pay to test" attitude has pissed off many players from PTU. You can foresee that this will get worse in the future).

And there are CIG specialities. For example their MMO designers believe that they are the king of the hills and dont need to look at proven stuff that worked in other MMOs. So these utter idiots brought us stuff like negative reputation, forced solo play because as group you share everything, a mission board that seeks its peer in term of utter shit design and utter shit implementation (negative reputation can lock you out of stuff, they love that players have to wait (because missions are first come, first serve - in an MMO. This already works LIKE SHIT with 100 player shards - I refuse to imagine what these utter designer idiots will do on larger shards). The smell of incompetence hits you quite hard when it comes to MMO design.

So basically you need to have patience. CIG gets stuffed money into their back with no ending in sight. This removes a major constraint that software projects have (time is money - you need to produce something worthwhile with the time (money) you have - in the real world). Because money is no constraint, time is also not. Why produce quality stuff if you have endless money and you can shit out untested stuff to LIVE and then "its alpha, bro" ?

If you compare CIG to real world software projects, you will fail because real software projects dont have endless money. Take for example the quality of CIG backend stuff. Where in the world you can construct backend services that silently fail and failing is on a rate like 50% - 100% ? The quality CIG produces is so low that you cannot compare it with real live stuff, where participants are expecting quality for the money they gave.

If SC would be a "chef" competition, CIG would shit on the plate and describe it as "its alpha, bro".

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

I know It'S aN AlPha and all, but shouldn't basic new functionality and most bugs associated with it be dealt with in the PTU and not live?? I'm just sayin'!