Sure not everyone who bought the game or a ship at this stage has enjoyed it, but a lot of us have. Even in its unfinished state there’s a lot of fun to be had.
And, part of the game at this stage is watching it develop.
The amount raised/sold so far is massive, but people keep buying because they’re getting something out of it.
What features are built and playable at this point? By its nature, it's hard for me to disentangle the aspirational marketing from the actually-available content, and there's so much critical content about SC over the last decade that it's hard to know which criticisms still apply. What can you actually do in-game?
There are nearly a dozen mission types that net you money and gear that you use to build your inventory + fleet. There are bounty systems that interact with your ability to pirate others and commit crime. There is mining, cave exploration to track down bad guys, literally hundreds of custom-designed ships that are fun to discover and drive for their various missions. And then a whole layer of social emergent gameplay on top of it.
I know I left a few comments like this on this thread already, but I'm a big fan of the game. As a game dev, I have a lot of respect for their ambition, tech, and recent transparency. I'm not sure why people always fixate on the money - people invest and donate to worse things. RSI isn't predatory about it, they're very honest about the progress and expectations (especially recently)
There's quite a lot you can do in game and there are tons of ships with many different specializations (cargo, salvaging, mining, exploration, fighters, bombers, corvettes). Some need multiple players to crew effectively
PVE
- Cargo delivery missions (from small to large size)
- Bounty hunting (in space and on planet)
- Mining
- Salvaging
- Cave exploration/rescue
- Escaping from prison
Isn't that all games though? Especially MMO's. Why do people think it's so much different for star citizen than any other game? At the end of the day, they're all just entertaining ways to waste time.
Can we get a field report from someone who has played it? I remember hearing about it 10 years ago and it seemed cool, I always thought it turned into vaporware.
I've got over 3k hours at this point roughly, so i maybe slightly biased
The game has major ups and downs, but nothing really comes close to the same feeling of being on a capital ship with your friends pulling out from a beautiful space port. I wish there was a better alternative but there isn't, nothihng really comes close.
Performance has vastly improved from 50 players per server to 110 now i beleive? And i think theres talks of increasing it further.
I tried it during one of their free play weekends. The first time I rode an elevator to the hangar, it ejected me through the wall, breaking my legs and forcing me to crawl to a medbay before I could do anything else.
Curious, not saying its your fault but did you have the game installed on Nvme/ssd? On a standard HDD even with high r/w speeds the game is borderline unplayable.
Also free fly weekends are when the game is at its worst, the servers are bought to its knees.
Again, no fault to the player and its completely on CIG but its a shame that a lot of players never get to see the game in its best light because free fly is a nightmare.
I might be missing something - are you suggesting that the elevator blasted me through a wall and broke my legs because I installed the game to a hard drive? I can't remember what sort of drive I installed it to, it wasn't installed for very long.
Sounds about right. I played off and on for a month or so; through a few updates.
There had/have been recurring problems with elevators and inventory. I would get ejected into space; no leg breaking.
I think just the way they mesh the world together makes that something that has been hard for them to fix.
The inventory issues are what got me to stop playing. Long inventory load times, and then 75% of the time, inventory would be lost or permanently broken (items lost/can't add new things to inventory).
Still fun for a few days. Pretty graphics. Space flight was fun.
FPS missions needed a lot of work, but functional.
Another thing that made me quit, was the tedium of setup. You respawn quickly, from death into the hospital (unless you end up in prison, for shooting an at FPS guard that looks 90% exactly like an FPS enemy (then you get the prison play loop, which is fun once or twice)). But, then you need to take the elevator (chance of instant death) down to the ground floor. find the train. wait for the train. take the elevator (chance of death; or stairs if you are lucky [ i feel like there's a 'I'm gonna git you sucka' joke in here ]) to the shopping district. Wander around the shopping district (which is different on each planet) to hopefully find new Armor, Rifle, Mining tool, Gravity-gun tool (not all planets have the things you need, even)... then get back to the train and repeat for the space dock. then elevator to your ship bay.
... that's like 10-30 minutes. it just gets tedious.
- probably more fun playing with groups of people, but it got too tedious playing solo.
Was an early Kickstarter backer, so I'll try it again at some point when it is more polished.
Agree that what I paid for was mainly a modern Wing Commander/Freelancer type game, and they are overreaching by a lot. I think the First-person-shooter stretch goal was added later in the funding campaign.
I also feel like a lot of the kick-starter ships have been power-creeped (and they also seem to be lagging behind in quality updates; because CIG has to design and sell new ships to make more money to fund development, and then most of that money goes to make new ships).
They should not be making new ships at all at this point, unless those ships are required for the single player campaign. Focus should be on game systems and game play.
I played during a free play weekend. I got out of my bed and immediately fell through the world and died. Tried again and went to look for the space port. Had to take a train to get there. The train ride was cool exactly once, but then you realize the planets are vast nothingness and the cool city you see really is completely empty. Lots of T-posing 3D models standing on tables and chairs. A much-vaunted "Bartender AI" that plays the same pint glass flip animation and says the same few dialog bits ad nauseum. The flight model is rather.. erm.. version zero like the rest of the game? As in, it doesn't really exist but maybe someday.
It's not an MMO as such, with something like 50 players per server. The Server Meshing God-tech that they've been banging on about for years now is practically impossible as described. To paraphrase, "you'll be able to shoot a gun from one ship and the bullet will pass through several cloud servers as it hits a player in another ship". Latency and n^2 are not your friends here. Honestly, based on this alone I'm surprised by the amount of Gell-mann Amnesia in the thread.
In my experience it's a "make your own fun" sort of game. Try it on a free play weekend, but IMO don't get sucked in and donate tens of thousands of dollars to a broken CryEngine demo running on promises.
There's a fully simulated solar system (Stanton) in game right now with 5 (I think?) populated planets that have cities and towns to visit and more space stations and moons to explore in first person. As for missions, there is fully functional economy with trade or smuggling, salvage, bounty hunting, and piracy. There is also a single player mode focused on dogfighting, and a basically unpopulated pvp FPS mode. There are upwards of 60 ships and 10ish ground vehicles to use in game alongside a small arsenal of small arms and pretty much all of them can be bought with in game currency or obtained in game through other means, though the servers do occasionally wipe when major updates happen (things you bought IRL are not wiped).
I backed this game on Kickstarter back in 2012. I don’t care for all this focus on multiplayer, I was just in it for the singleplayer aspect. I wish they would just deliver that.
At this point what you actually want is to download the "Wing Commander" mod for the open re-implementation of the FreeSpace 2 engine. It's really good looking and a fun to play experience.
And, part of the game at this stage is watching it develop.
The amount raised/sold so far is massive, but people keep buying because they’re getting something out of it.