I Wonder What Star Citizen Is Up To

Is this suppose to be an article? Or is posting tweets linked on a website a new fad?

I know SC is a game many people like to dunk on (sometimes for completely right reasons) but let's not pretend like there's absolutely nothing there and CIG somehow scammed millions of players.

If anyone is actually interested in the game, I'd like to stress that you can buy the cheapest package and have access to everything using in-game money. There are also free flight events, available multiple times a year, so you can try the game out and decide for yourself if you like what's there. So far, despite horrible technical difficulties that often happen due to stress on the servers during those times the number of players keeps growing. Take that as you wish...

As for the package... Is it ridiculous? Yes, absolutely. It's 100% worth dunking on.

I'll dunk on actually calling it a game. It's an alpha version of a game that's been in development for over a decade. They came up with the idea of securing funding past the kickstarter phase by selling ships with the promise that pledges wouldn't be in the final version. The end result is that every new player after release will start from zero in a world full of players with massive fleets. Huge disincentive to start. Additionally, release would stop the flow of pledges from the whales they've already hooked (assuming they even keep the promise to stop pledges). With that in mind, why would they ever release? They've made nearly a billion fucking dollars and people will buy shit no matter what they shovel out. Pretty sure they've even sold ships they weren't created yet.

They've expanded and revised and removed the road map so many times, but the game is still less complete than elite dangerous and infinitely buggier. I occasionally drop into the SC subreddit once every 6 months or so to look for release date cope, though it looks like most of them are reaching the acceptance stage and either quitting or enjoying the game as it is. I won't knock that per se, but spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a buggy unfinished game is... Worrisome. Especially since the scale is so damn huge, I've even met people that said they "only" spent 300 dollars on ships.
- Just so we're clear, I'm not trying to convince anyone to buy (or even like) the game/alpha/whatever you wanna call it (personally I think if you have micro- let alone macrotransactions, "alpha version" defense doesn't hold much legitimacy). I absolutely agree that there were (and still are) issues with the development process and CIG's approach but let's not pretend like any developer could create what SC is aiming for in less time.
  
  And I don't mean "has similar features" like in case of Elite - I'm sure it's a great game but they have a completely different approach even if many features are similar. SC aims for a borderline immersive sim gameplay in an MMO setting which, in addition to all their other goals, is a massive technical undertaking.
  
  Officially (and yes, I'll stick to this wording as that's all we have) the last few years were spent on building the tech to do just that, as was shown during the last CitizenCon (I know, convention for an unreleased game). Some small parts of said tech were already added in the last patching cycle, many are suppose to trickle down throughout this year - will this really happen? We'll see.
  
  For many people, SC is their dream game which is why they are willing to spend way, waaaay more than that. Additionally, many of those $300 or so purchases aren't one and done affairs but rather people who bought a cheap package and decided to upgrade throughout the years.
  
  Next point is the fact that a good chunk of the player base consists of older IT folk (i.e. people with lots of disposable income). Finally, many people decide to throw money at the game after trying it out during free flights - one of the worst times to play due to overloaded servers, as mentioned in my original post.
  
  And to reiterate, I'm not trying to excuse the spending, just want to add some context.
  
  While for me SC is also a dream game I'm not a whale. I can't justify spending shit-ton of money on a game, no matter how good (especially an unreleased one). I'm someone who bought a $40 package (Star Citizen + Squadron 42) back when the only thing available was the hangar module - a simple, single player map where you could run around and enter your ship. That's it.
  
  I enjoy what's there, take a break when I'm bored or annoyed, hope for the best and criticize CIG when they do something stupid. I don't expect SC to be perfect nor take everything the devs say as gospel. There are many like me but, as it usually is with online discussion, the ones most passionate/crazy for or against something are the loudest.
  
  As for people starting with more ships, here's my take on it:
  
  Having a massive fleet doesn't mean squat if you have no one to operate it. This isn't EVE where one person can control a whole capital sized ship and rule the world. Ships in SC require actual crew to be effective or even used beyond flying. Personally, I don't plan to upgrade to anything bigger than a two player ship for that very reason, and even when I do that, I'll stick to buying stuff in game.
  
  At the end of the day, this is a sandbox - some people will aim to have everything, others will be fine having a basic ship and going about their day doing chill activities. For people with huge fleets to have advantage there needs to be some kind of victory condition and as of now, there really isn't - nothing beyond what you set out for yourself anyway.
  
  Lastly, I'd like to add a quote from CIG included in this article from Polygon written in 2018 on the topic of the same package (different price though since it includes more stuff now).
  
  In a statement to Polygon, Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games said it created the Legatus Pack in response to requests from a hardcore segment of the community. That includes people who lead guilds and others who view the game as more of a lifestyle hobby consistent with golf or sailing, according to the company.
  
  “It wasn’t created in a vacuum,” said Eric Kieron Davis, the head of Cloud Imperium’s studio in Los Angeles. “We were responding to what the community asked for. We have some passionate supporters that are not looking at Star Citizen as your typical game purchase/transaction but rather a dream project they want to see happen.”
  
  Sorry for the wall of text but I wanted to add some details to the discussion.
I was also expecting something more from the article. This is 100% posting tweets on your website so you can drive engagement there by linking your article in a tweet on Mastodon.

The top comment has it right (for me that’s getting internal leaks). Getting a disaffected employee would be rad. I turned down CGI during the pandemic because, while I was really interested in seeing just how fucked it was on the inside, I could not justify wasting six+ months of my life siphoning money off whales making something going absolutely nowhere.
- I'd be absolutely down for a proper article on the topic, especially one based on proper research into the pack and the company (that doesn't mean it has to be positive, apparently I need to stress that out). Twitter posting on the other hand feels like a bottom of a barrel "content" creation.
Don't you lose all that in game shit when they wipe the universe occasionally? Unless you specifically bought it with real world money?

They supposedly have been integrating their new "perfectly scalable dynamic server meshing" technology yet there still seems to be just as many networking issues as ever before during say... LevelCap's streams.
- You do though wipes become less and less frequent - these days it can be over a year unless something goes seriously wrong or there's a big backend update (the only such thing recently was a complete rewrite of database storage to prepare for the server meshing you've mentioned).
  
  To clarify, server meshing isn't in yet - it's currently being tested on preview channels. Recent update separated the gameplay server from the database server responsible for keeping all of this stuff in game (as in, if server dies all the changes stay online instead of getting reset).
  
  IF they can make it work on the scale required for the game like SC it should not only help with stability but also make many of the planned features possible. For now they need to prove that they can actually do it.

This is so crazy at this point, it REALLY seems like it has to be a money laundering operation.

Grifting idiots, I would imagine.

Reminder that Elite:Dangerous is a game that has all that star citizen has ever promised, today. You can get it on steam.

Elite: Dangerous doesn’t hold a candle to Star Citizen in depth, immersion and fidelity.

The only thing Elite: Dangerous has Star Citizen beat on is sound design which is absolutely phenomenal.
- Elite dangerous exists as a playable released game.
  
  Case closed.
- Strongly disagree, except the sound design which is incredible.
  
  My dreams of exploring the galaxy were fully realised in Elite: Dangerous.
- That depends on what you want from a game like E:D or SC. But E:D has one giant "feature": It is a finished game and you don't have to spend (incredible amounts (I know you don't have to) of) money on a promise of a final release done time in the future.
- Star Citizen doesn't have as much content as you guys like to pretend it does lol
  
  Oh another package mission to the same outpost! Oh another group of braindead AI that I have to fight!
  
  On top of that you only have like four planets and one solar system.
  
  dEpTh. IMmeRsIoN.
I like to dunk on SC as much as the next guy but how can you say this at all with a straight face? For starters, can I walk around my ship? Is there a story-based campaign I can play through? Are there capital ships with dozens of players with different roles working on them?

SC will never get finished or live up to the promises it made but ED barely even tries to do anything beyond being a space truck simulator.
- Yes (since the latest DLC), yes (the thargoids mystery), and yes (carriers have been here for a few years).
  
  Of course it's not exactly what you would get in SC because they're ultimately different games. But you do have all of that and more, E:D has massively improved since it came out.
Eeeeehhhhh... Not really. I stopped playing Elite because it's the perfect example of what "wasted potential" means.
all that star citizen has ever promised

not before the heat death of the universe
Elite was the reason I stopped buying early access. $150 for beta that was over hyped.