[fapjacks]

No, Star Citizen is not "way overdue". You can login and play it, and you've been able to for years now. That is disingenuous, because it's always been understood that the game would be under development for some time. As a November 2012 High Admiral backer, I think things are going extremely well for Star Citizen. Unlike a lot of other projects on Kickstarter.

[HCIdivision17]

I think if we're going to be fair, it's more accurate to say it's totally, unequivocally overdue. Large chucks are flat out late. But! That is fine. We can forgive a late game if it's good, and it looks to be awesome. Optimism invariably takes over at the start of project, and we all knew it was going to be a long haul.

And I say that as a person with a few ships awaiting release, too. While I really want my Carrack, it's far more important that they make it good. The estimated release times have moved back a few time, but that's the expense of great work in the rest of the game. Backers seem to largely accept this as the cost of buying into an in-progress development: priorities must be fluid, and we have to make do.

The trick to Kickstarter is to only invest what you can lose (like anything!) and then be patient. Starcitizen is stupendously ambitious, and is going to cost a fortune to develop. They successfully made the transistion to being nearly self-sustained, basically using Kickstarter to kickstart their development process.

[fapjacks]

The original goal didn't include any of the massive stretch goals that were added in as funding ballooned. CR has been completely forthright about the schedule as the stretch goals have been designed and built. It's not overdue because nobody is expecting it to be finished right now except Derek Smart, arguably the world's shittiest game designer. Saying it's "totally, unequivocally overdue" because we've passed the original planned release date in November of 2012 on the Kickstarter page is totally, unequivocally disingenuous.

[aluhut]

There was another release date 2016. Passed that too. Now there is this Vulcan thing. Meanwhile the full game universe is nowhere to be seen. They have now given up setting a release date at all.

I don't understand where the community gets all that positive vibes from but I've lost it and yes....I invested too.

[HCIdivision17]

I maintain positivity because it's not vaporware, just in feature hell. There's no silver bullet for that, just metric crap-tonnes of lead bullets, as they say.

And expectations are everything. I had endless hours of fun with Privateer as a kid, and had a blast with Freelancer when I was older. That covers a large chunk of my life, so my patience is tempered, a bit. Eve fills the niche while I wait, and I'm very excited to see my old memories come back in HD in a new universe. What's another 5 years out of 25? (And I'm serious - I had fun with Privateer, and in retrospect it was kinda terrible! Pushing past the uncanny valley of VR sim is effort worth waiting for!)

Honestly? Expectations are screwy. Eve has a sophisticated character creation system, and it's essentially to take a 200x200 pixel picture. Just fantastic, and almost as useless. But it really makes the game feel bigger and more real. Eve's taken more than 15 years to get to where it is, and that's sort of where I hold my standard. Time ain't the barrier to me.

[aluhut]

We share our experience in the past but I must disagree on eve. Eves development is comparable to the one of WoW where it was nice to play in the early stages and only if you look back now, it looks terrible. Eve grew on something that was fabulous back then already. I know...I was hooked.

What we have with SC now is the shattered result of all those terrible management decisions and a CEO who does not take the critics serious (probably also because of this one popular "critics" criticism). I'm not sure if anything good can grow from this but I'm pretty sure some huge changes in management could help out here to at least get a clear and realistic target.

They owe it to the backers even if the loudest of them don't care. This is a project which will be an example for others. Future will show what kind of example...

[fapjacks]

You've got some kind of axe to grind and it's showing through in every one of your posts here. You haven't played the game, you have said a bunch of stuff that are outright lies, and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't reconcile with reality.

[fapjacks]

Do you actually read the emails and participate in testing? I am not even an evocatus tester and I can play in the persistent universe. I think you're thinking about the fact that -- before the final game launches -- there will be a universe reset. But what you've just said here is not true. [0]

[0] https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...

[aluhut]

Are you talking about this?

> Please note: Even though we call it the ‘Live’ service, it’s still very much in the Alpha stage of development, and there are tons of features and optimizations to be added. Players on the ‘Live’ service are very much testers, too!

We are talking about 130 million dollar. A hill of mismanagement, ideas stacked on ideas and Spawn offs to keep the hype running. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about. This game is the peek of that new Alpha Game wave that is flooding steam for example. It's like now everybody wants to be like SZ. Greenlight some rough concepts, ???, profit/cancel.

This game is a terrible example for others.

[fapjacks]

Okay, so you've played the game and enjoy it immensely and think it's one of the best things to come along in years. You think it will serve as a fantastic example of the future of game development. I'm not sure what SZ is but you have such a high opinion of it that I might check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

[HCIdivision17]

I guess I just don't see the stretch goals as bonus wins. They caused the whole game to be rethought and redesigned. They're integral to what the game is expected to be and have driven the ambition to make the game better. And again, even if we look at the components individually, many are still late from the times they were estimated to be released. And I wasn't being disengenous: I'm talking about simply the Carrack, the part I'm most excited about. But CIG's gotten good about not promising dates anymore, a lesson every Kickstarter and development group should learn!

My point is that lateness isn't the sin people make it out to be. A well polished and expansive game can come late, and so long as the medium still does it justice it'll be great. All the gnashing of teeth and whining will be forgotten as people play fun. Setting expectations for deliverables is far better than expectation for delivery times, since you can miss deadlines while still delivering (leaving you with a lose-win pattern). And it's better to set expectations realistically rather than disappoint, because then at best you can deliver disappointment on time. SC has some damn good pedigree, so I think it's easy to believe they'll deliver on quality and expectation, and that overrides everything else.

I was thrilled about NMS (and had a blast with it), and I think it panned a bit because it rushed. There was some noise that warped expectations, and yet the game became just what it set out to be. Further updeates made it even more fun to play, and to quote Day9 "I will play the shit out of No Man's Sky 2." Heck, we even have celebrated failures like VoxelQuest, which is one of my favorite KickStarter epics. Obduction was just what I expected from Cyan. And I'm honestly kinda excited to see if Hiveswap manages to deliver despite hype. Broken Age was a bit bizzare, since it actually probably would have been better if it stopped in the middle (but still a lot of fun). We live in such a golden age of choice it's possible that Dual Universe will be good!

Imagine having NMS, SC, and DU all with their own take on a large persistent universe - pick the style you like! I'll happily wait years to see that, and we can usually play them before they're done, which takes the sting out of waiting I think.

[anonemouse145]

As an investor in Exxon, I disagree that you should criticize a company when one ship leaks a little oil.

[fapjacks]

What are you even talking about, leaking a little oil? This is exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I'm interested in what about Star Citizen development you think qualifies as "leaking a little oil".

[abiox]

> As a November 2012 High Admiral backer

i suppose this correlates with the major emotional investment.