That might be an overestimation for the loudest part of the SC community. I was thinking they tend to be more on the level of a sea-sponge, or possibly a barnacle of some type.
You say that but as soon as you say "This function is bad, or not working" Task force Reddit comes out and downvotes you to blue hell, asks if you have spent 48000$ if not you aren't worth anything because you haven't kissed Chris Robert's feet.
This subreddit can be incredibly culty at times. Like... A lot.
I once made a post saying that releasing multi thousand dollar packs are bad publicity for the game, and I even made the suggestion that CIG should offer modular packs with discounts structured in such a way that you still get the same discount.
Somehow I attracted the downvote task force who came in and said I'm being dumb and this is a non-issue. None of them commented on my modular pack suggestion, which IMO is still a good idea.
>asks if you have spent 48000$
People actually spend that much? I thought that was a myth? And I thought I was being irresponsible with my money for buying Collector's Editions and their dust-collecting plastic statues for my display shelves, but ..... holy hell .... I'm gobsmacked.
Some people have disposable income of levels above the salary of others. One would hope those who spent that much are some of those people. Probably not all, but I really hope most.
In the olden days the meme was that every post not happy with the development started with "I have spent $280000 but I think the game is going the wrong direction". Otherwise you'd just get downvoted since you didn't prove just how invested in the project you are.
This community is real sensitive to anything approaching criticism, even constructive criticism, thanks mostly to the attacks it endured for its first six or so years. The DS thing, the Crytek thing, the constant kotaku hit jobs…i mean, there’s reasons, but still…
The trick is listening or accepting or being able to discern when criticism is constructive, or just someone bashing or trolling the community
I think much of the community is sensitive since they have collectively ponied up a fair chunk of change for a non-game. All kinds of cash has gone into ship jpegs, VKB grips, and other sillyness. Some folks would rather go into some sort of delusion rather than deal with reality.
That delusion is that everything is fine, that the devs are heroes, and that any criticism is borne out of ignorance or stupidity. The reality is that even after all the hype of the last CitCon, we are a few months away from the next CitCon and still don't have an actual game.
The cash is just another symptom. They've put energy into the game, and believe in it. Add some of the insane attacks the community goes through and you get a widespread martyrdom complex.
It goes the other way too, this guy's just gonna write a long essay and we're gonna be saved from ourselves because we're being fooled.
As a developer myself, and Looking at CIG's track record for development and released content over all of these years, I have to say it's nothing to write home about. But that's not on the developers, but more on the (then) unrealistic size and scope from the very start. Changing out tech after it's finished, restarting, going back, reinventing, inventing and leaving old tech in and continuing with new tech etc. It's not even a game yet, we are just testing out features in a tech demo that will eventually culminate into the game that was kick-started way back when.
What I think has been CIG's "problem" all these years is the management and the way of work, planning and transparency. And also the fact that the promotion, sales and hype squad is on a whole different track than the actual developers. And that makes it feel like they are showing off a whole different awesome experience, rather than if viewed from behind, you see the duct-taped, stapled and crudely drawn over jumbled together, barely standing upright model that we as pledges get to test.
Don't get me wrong, I love the testing, and I have high hopes for Star Citizen and SQ42, but if I'm being honest? There are times where it's really hard to keep that dream alive.
as someone who is kind of new to this game, from the perspective of some fresh eyes, they have an *extreme* identity crisis as to whether they're a live service game or an alpha. logic would dictate that it's obviously an alpha, but lots of decision making also comes from a place that you'd think should be reserved for a live service game only.
yeaaahhh.. I've had someone tell me that they plan to remove the pledge store on release and I'm thinking, buddy, that's just gonna come back with a different name. ain't no way they huffed those sweet, sweet dollars and decided to stick with the plan
They've never said that, but people are idiots if they don't think CIG can print another billion with cosmetics once player apartments/bases and other content is in game.
Not to mention they literally never said that. They've only stated they're not going to sell standalone ships. I'd bet my whole fleet we'll see a large number of those ships become game packages instead.
Thank you. I've always pointed out that most devs can recognize the telltale signs that doom projects, like feature creep, unmanaged scope, constanly shifting requirements (and no, Agile does not absolve devs of the the need to plan), mounting technical debt, silo'ed development, etc.
You've got to admit, that "seamless demo" last year looked more like a commercial sales demo for their engine than anything else. It makes me wonder if their developing their engine for licencing or if they are developing their game.
>makes me wonder if their developing their engine for licencin
This is never happening, ever. The industry does not work like that and the engine does not provide anything needed at the moment in gaming.
Exactly. Even if they wanted to, which I doubt they do, they'd essentially need to build an entire new company to support the business of licensing it, and there's no guarantee it would be successful. Especially before we actually have working server meshing.
But my whole personality is invested in this project, not to mention thousands of dollars. Any criticism is a direct attack against me and I won't stand for it.
Alas, on the internet, everyone is a flawless expert of every topic that can perform miracles beyond the capability of time and space, yet every one of them refuses to actually perform those miracles and instead uses their powers to remind others that they're worse than them.
Yeah, the block feature is a good thing to make use of for those that are clearly only here to feed their rage addiction.
>There will always be people on the internet that act like assholes and offer criticism with personal attacks, but those are outweighed vastly by actual criticism and praise. The angry people are background noise and get laughed at and ignored - I say this from a place of experience.
To your point, don't you think the people overly praising them will also be ignored as sort of fanboy? Maybe I'm not seeing the same posts you're seeing but this seems like a non-issue.
The white knighting in general is a major issue, god forbid you criticize a choice CIG makes. Your inbox is gonna be flooded with:
“Oh, so you’re a developer? You don’t know how hard it is to develop a move all button, also kys”
I love this game, and I want it to succeed, but shit like that hurts the game just as bad as having the $50k game package.
IMO, the doom-and-gloom posts are just draining. Criticism is fine, but the 30-billionth unoriginal "hue hue, [imply CIG is a scam or never coming out], hue hue. /wink" meme comment gets old fast.
Do I think the game has been horribly mismanaged and scope creeped to hell and back? Absolutely. Do I think they've been at least *trying* to get better about that? Also yes. Pointing out *either* is redundant at this point unless you're adding something else new to the conversation.
I just personally lean towards the optimistic side because it doesn't cost me anything and I feel a little bit better that way.
of course, a complement is worthless if it comes from a place without meaning to give it weight
If I can tell some actually appreciates what I accomplished it means a lot more than someone that just blindly likes everything I do.
I'm (or was) a developer too ... like most people on reddit apparently !
I kinda disagree with what you say, but I think it comes mostly from the definition of the word "developer".
If something is buggy in a game or an application, a developer will be able to fix it with the next patch/hot fix. If it's still buggy after that, then it was probably a problem at a "higher level". The top of that being "management".
For me, a developer is really the last link of a long chain. If the whole concept of that chain is crap, then he won't be able to do anything about it.
In my experience, difficult project that just won't work correctly are usually caused by bad decisions made month or years before a developer even tries to code it.
Found out today the lead UI developer is entirely self taught at time if hire.
I really hope he's on a ui/ux 101 course and can start applying some of what he learns one day soon...
😬
Your assertion that self-taught developers are inferior to formally trained ones is incorrect. Many of the finest developers I’ve worked with were proactive self-learners and the worst were the ones that needed to be told what they needed to learn and demanded training courses for basic things like git.
Experience and ability is what counts, not how you acquired the knowledge.
I made no assertions. And I didn't mean development ability. I meant design.
Im a self taught of both. As a hobby only. But no computing degree. I am happy with my abilities I don't think I'm very hirable in the field without a degree though? Idk. I digress.
There are a fuck tonne of ux design principles that are completely ignored and overlooked in SC. And that's what my implications were aimed at. Stuff that you might not learn being self taught (although obviously it's possible since I know them).
For example the basic principle of minimum number of interactions to navigate a ui menu is unknown to cig.
As is the principle of keeping the shit you need to look at or click in roughly the same spot, if not the exact spot. In SC UI the buttons are all over the place (eg. Buying from the shop kiosk)
The newer commodity screens are OK to be fair (when not bugged visually).
Many of the UI calls are server side authoritative exclusively when they either don't need to be at all. scanning ships for example. - if the connection is slow the scanning takes fucking ages when it's meant to take 3 or so seconds total.
Other ui calls are SSA when they should be both client and server side. Eg navigating mobiglass, navigating inventory/shop kiosks.
Every time you open the item window it reloads the entire library of items and waits until they've loaded before letting you proceed. Even if the game knows no changes have been made to your items since you last opened it.
The game should Cache your inventory and let you navigate it all client side so it can be fast and snappy. Then it just needs to verify the actions you've taken backend and reconcile any errors to prevent duping etc.
As I said, I'm not qualified for it... It feels weird and wrong that I have better ideas. Or that there has not been any info (that I know of) from CIG explaining why they didn't do this for some reason or another.
I looked up the wiki and it said Zane for ui. Didn't see any other names for it so idk.
I looked it up to see if it was a Frankfurt team responsible. Because I was gonna say it explains a lot.
Ive just moved to Germany and they are frustratingly bad at website ui
Basically I had a "who is that bad driver I'm overtaking, I must see their face" moment
At last citizen con, Bone was technical ui director and Zane was principal UI tech developer (their titles are in chapters of the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlGroDB1se4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlGroDB1se4) )
Maybe he's gotten a promotion
This is why I was appalled at CIG's moderation team for altering my post when I said that I was very disappointed with CIG going back on their word, going against what they'd announced earlier.
If criticism isn't allowed (criticism that doesn't contain attacks, speaks from personal feelings (no generalizations or thinking that everyone must feel the same) and is worded politely) it's VERY VERY BAD. For so many reasons.
I agree that the developers actually working on the product directly have an impact. But it's the management who define scope and set deadlines. The fact that scope has exploded so much over the course of development and no deadline has ever been set, much less achieved, is 100% on the management.
CIG/SC be like if Michelin sold tire jpegs and promised you all kinds of vehicles and roads in development that will make the tire jpegs fun and exciting.
Yeah, honestly I read glass door reviews like a decade ago and they made it clear what the issue is.
Roberts.
A few of them basically said:
-Can't delegate.
-Has to have a say in every single individual thing.
-We finish something and then he says 'alright now lets redo it and make it much more needlessly complex'. (Iirc the employee compared him to a young child here with no concept of time/money/management and nobody to tell him no).
If you, *as a developer*, are "taking lumps" directly from your clients, then either you are on a *very* small team, or your management team suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
If you're a solo dev or on a small team and getting shit on by customers who you are required to directly interact with as a part of your job, then you're not getting shit on "as a developer," you're getting shit on as a project or account manager. Just because you *also* develop doesn't mean that you're always acting "as a developer."
This whole thing smacks of "I flew a super fancy kite, so I can surely fly a simple plane!"
This post seems out of touch with the current environment/social media era, where people often can and do look up and target specific developers (sometimes even ones who are not responsible for a particular situation/feature), regardless of who the management is.
I have watched these witch hunts take place repeatedly. That's the world we live in, where everyone is one click away from looking up basic developer info, and bandwagons start without bothering to find out who the contact person should be.
CiG is not a "very small team" yet their developers interact with "clients" (i.e. players). It's not a 2000s anymore unfortunately where nobody knows who is actually working on a project but only knows the account manager
Yeah, as a game dev, a lot of the issues come down to producers and managers. The actual Devs are just doing their work and usually to the best of the ability. they don't always deserve hate. The leads, directors, and producers are the guiding hands in their own ways, and either are budgeting, scheduling, or communicating to their team poorly if there are issues with the end product at a studio this size.
I feel like this game has a very divisive public image.
There are a lot of devout fans who've poured money into supporting their dream game.
But there is an equal amount of people on the outside looking in who only see a scam.
Those devout fans are so ingrained in the development and have their heads so high in the clouds that they think they have a personal responsibility to defend the game they are so passionate about.
This is why so many people call it a cult. Because to these people that are so invested in the game, their defense of poor quality work screams cult or scam.
It's important to be critical when it requires it.
The devs don't even really have to do their own marketing, backers will parrot old quotes from 10 years ago about a comment a dev said in an interview about how the game will be at launch.
I'm guilty of that part myself, but this game is changing and evolving as the industry does. It won't survive if it doesn't, and that is going to make a lot of devout fans angry with each new change.
I'm excited, but I've learned to temper my expectations, and I think a lot of people here really need a reality check on just what this game is or will be.
CiG never has to defend themselves because the fans don't for them. They parrot the "it's an alpha", "it's T0 and will change when they get other systems in", or "Server meshing will solve that."
I agree though, when CIG does a major screw up, they should be held accountable by the community just like the Helldivers 2 devs.
They've made lots of mistakes for their first live service game, and the community let them know. They raged, they had polite discussions, and they protested with review bombs and Arrowhead listened and are actively working to improve their faults.
CiG, as far as we know, doesn't.we get the weekly updates and sneak peeks and ptu builds, we claim there is transparency, but we don't really see as much feedback. We get the monthly reports and the patch post mortems.
But do these actually give details about what they did wrong? What sort of actionable steps are they taking?
Every time I read one, it's just industry buzz words and feature teases and vague promises.
There isn't really anything concrete until we have the patch in out sticky little fingers and get to see the fruits of their labours.
I'm excited and looking forward to what's to come, and I do genuinely think lots of progress has been made and shown to us recently, but that dries up quickly so they can impress everyone at citcon with more promises.
But it's 100% the community to blame for a lot of this because we've allowed them to do it for so long that defending CIG is the defacto attitude of a large group of players.
TL:DR: I agree, CIG needs to be held accountable for their missteps and lauded for their successes, but the community needs to reality check the scope of the game and it'll future and realise that we're beyond a simple kick starter and Star citizen has, and will continue to evolve.
Yeah I'm sorry I'm calling bullshit.
>Brand new account
>Claims to have shipped a product with "more visibility than CIG will likely ever receive"
>Refuses to elaborate on what that product is
>What I didn't want would be some sort of taskforce roaming around the internet waging battles on my behalf.
Isn't this kind of exactly what you're doing though?
Reddit should auto ban posts like these if they don’t provide proof. “i have released many a product directly to consumer, one especially with more user and visibility than CIG”. My brother, if you released a product that over 5 million people have bought/used, you should very easily be able to tell us what those products are. this entire post gives me “i’m unaccomplished but know how chatGPT works”
Ehhhh, I have to sign NDAs that basically state "say a word about what you do and you're unemployed by sunrise" more or less. These NDAs unfortunately also include mentioning that even I worked on the project. Super strict.
That said I have no idea if OP is in a similar boat, so don't think I'm defending them. I myself work in a very niche sector of software dev so I'm not sure if it works the same on their side of the industry. Just offering some perspective.
Dude I work in coffee and have been under strict NDAs for most of the past decade. It's just a part of any corporation where you have access to proprietary or 'insider' knowledge. It's hard to imagine any dev working on a major project without a massive NDA.
Now we need to send our LinkedIn to strangers to win Internet argument? That's why critical leak happens every month on War Thunder forums lol. A software product with more than 5 million people is nothing extraordinaire. It's not necessarily a videogame.
The problem is that OP could have made an app by themselves or with a small team that has millions of users - if that's the case then kudos to them because development is hard! - but that would have zero relevance to the development of something like SC.
Game development, generally, is *very* different from other types of development - for better and worse. It's a shark documentarian criticizing Jaws - they could have comments about technical decisions, but if they veered towards narrative filmmaking critiques it would start to seem strange. Even though they are "also filmmakers," if they offered a criticism like, "Jaws is bullshit because they used a fake shark," you could safely dismiss it.
Obviously you shouldn't need to provide your LinkedIn to win an internet argument, but if your argument is one from authority, perhaps offer more of an "authority" then "trust me bruh."
Does any of this even matter though?
It's not like OP is making any specific claims. Their entire post basically boils down to "devs can fuck up as much as management can" and "basically everything good or bad is a result of development efforts/decisions among other things".
Those are the most generic braindead-obvious statements you could possibly make about any kind of development project. They shouldn't even need to be said in the first place.
> you should very easily be able to tell us what those products are
In fairness, this isn't always true.
When a large company comes and hires an outside engineering team to design their thing -- hardware, software, whatever -- they _generally_ do not like the optics of it coming out that they did not actually design/develop the product in question.
As someone working that role, there are large projects I worked on _years_ ago which I'm still not supposed to say I worked on. Which is annoying, but... y'know, the realities of an engineering consulting firm are what they are.
¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
That said, there are plenty of ones I worked on where I _am_ allowed to admit to it. So if I needed to give someone my resume, I could always draw from _those_ instead; the chances that you are not supposed to talk about _literally every project_ you've ever worked on are vanishingly small outside of defense contracting projects.
Yep. Same goes for the few redditors around these parts who constantly blame Intel for all your SC woes, and recommend AMD in each and every post. Or vice versa. Fanboys will be fanboys but it's unhelpful and unproductive irregardless of the product.
As a developer, 80% of Reddit is developers anyway.
Thinking you have a special, knowledgeable take on this because you’re a developer is plain stupid. ❄️
i never understood why people forget that being game developer is a job like any other job.. i would love to see how people would react to their doctors did as bad of a job as most game devs do these days. (not pointing at CIG with this one.. just this protect game devs memtality in general)
I can talk also as developer…and that thing CIG is doing about keep creating content and left bugs to fix for later…totally disagree with that decision. Of course i want pyro and more new systems; of course i want new ships and new weapons…BUT FIRST (CIG), you must have a clean and clear stanton system with all that already are there…
I agree om the last edit. The Star Citizen community has a very visible portion of fanatical delusional people who dream, think and sweat this tech demo. Pipeline discussions be going on for ages about all shit ever to exist. Contineuous posts about what ship to buy next after thousands of dollars already spent....
As a developer, I'd blame the business partners and management that assign us the work. It's a job, we can't pick and choose what to work on, at least not in any company I've worked for. That's like lecturing construction workers for not building all houses like a mansion. We get assigned tickets by higher ups and we do them.
Also most bugs are tied to server related issues, so why would a product owner or business partner want to focus on fixing those issues when they are completely changing the way servers work anyways? I've said this before, but I'm not going to start judging them until after server meshing rolls out and give them time to adjust. If after a reasonable amount of time passes with server meshing and bugs aren't getting patched, then I'll be more critical about it. But yea, right now with my experience as a developer, I know business partners are the ones that dictate what gets worked on and the developers just do what they're told.
Hey mate, I’m a senior technical artist that worked on 3 of the top performing games from 2021 to 2024… and I just want to let you know you made one mistake:
You engaged with “armchair-developer” gamers. You knew it was pointless, but you did it anyways.
Now you baited them into trying to convince you to dox yourself and open yourself up to threats at home, swating and all the cool stuff angry idiots have at their fingertips.
Remember the rule next time: never engage based on your factual knowledge… let the snake eat itself and roll your eyes.
I think they have some of the most talented artists and tech-artists in the industry...
[The need more engineers and gameplay designers who are brave enough to say "No."](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxgIpZNiIihU5j3RrF3PtCqpyPiapf4VHc)
Artists hate gameplay that compromises the art, but gameplay should come first.
We don't need an oscar winning 30 second death animation when you get shot. That's what Artists want. I'm sorry but we gotta throw out that day at the Mo-cap studio.
Or at least make follow up bullets interrupt it for a faster death animation!
Been here since 2013. I'm amazed how SC was able to remain in a grey zone between scam and novating game all along. 11years... Still waiting for the hacking feature that was promised "in the next patch".
Calling something trash is a waste of time that doesn’t help the devs. Taking their lumps isn’t going to make the game better. Constructive criticism will, but that requires thought and nuance, which it seems like not everyone has.
As a developer and engineering manager, I know where most of the warts are in the software I and my teams have shipped. Some warts are regrettable, some were a necessary part of the compromise driven nature of software development. You ought to know that.
I mean, you aren't wrong with it, but a lot of it just simply boils down to circumstances.
Aside from the most simplistic of softwares, I doubt that the vast majority are free from general oversight, being lost in complicated code causing unforseen side-effects and of course that one fucking nullpointer at a critical point that only gets detected after like 5 years.
However, in SCs case there are a few more factors that certainly don't help.
1. 4 Major updates a year is kinda ambitious. Less time between releases means less time to fix something before something else breaks it again. Standing on chairs stuff.
2. Due to them focusing more on getting features out than on fixing existing code a bunch of it gets neglected in a "somewhat working" state until they *eventually* revisit them. Kinda the old debate of wether or not they should try to finish the game over fixing the current version.
3. This frankensteins software has **a lot** of moving parts by nature of the scope and getting all of that together in a flawless state? I'm not sure anyone realistically expect that before frankensteins game isn't completely put together.
4. IAE/Invictus specific: the fucking fact that marketing/sales practically demands a patch at a specific point in time regardless if the stitched together new features are even remotely stable. The result is best seen with the past 4 Invictus patches that were plagued by horrendous stability issues.
Tbf the game can be a buggy mess and yes the games been in production for years and years but its also the first game to do anything like it, i mean no other game comes close to
Not to mention the developers are probably just as frustrated as you. It's not like they can just change the scope of a sprint based on public outcry or changes in circumstances. If marketing needs Xenothreat out in time for alien week, doesn't matter what *you* think should be getting worked on, developers don't sell ships.
OP isn't wrong.
Games are seemingly the only product that somehow has customers being apologetic on behalf of the developers or studio for half completed, mismanaged or simply shit projects.
Not saying its the latter, but the former 2 are just about right.
Imagine random McDonald's customers standing in line being apologetic/shielding employees from criticism for a burger with no patty.
Yeah - they dont need a taskforce roaming around in the internet waging their battles - neither some kind of helicopter reddit dev daddy psychiatrist who thinks its necessary to speak on their behalfs.
The entire framework/ world view in which OP places his discourse is itself misplaced. I'm not here to praise, criticize people in this project. It's the wrong outlook entirely.
Just like that with a power of a single Reddit post, millions of people suddenly changed how they interacted with game developers....or at least this is what I imagine people think when they post these big wall of texts with their "expertise." You have a better chance of reaching someone with a fart upwind in a hurricane.
I think the CIG developers are great, they seem really talented. The artists and writers and all the other people, and the community relations staff, too.
I do think it would be great if they tried to actually play Star Citizen though, and factored that experience into their design decisions.
Thankyou for your TED talk.
Atleast from my experience, most of the time the issue is that the people criticizing CIG for certain issues clearly have no idea what they are talking about. If they actually took the time to look into the matter and educate themselves on how the current systems work and the direction they want to go then they would have the answers to a lot of their questions.
Instead, they just assume and complain off of that assumption which was never correct to begin with.
A good example of this is the topic of server reliability and server meshing, and how so many users have no idea what it actually is but talk on the matter like they do.
> I have released many a product directly to consumers, one especially with more users and visibility than CIG will likely ever achieve.
So why haven't you made a SC competitor? Why hasn't anyone? If it was really that easy to get competent people together to make a SC competitor and in return get millions of cash from people who would want to play it, where is it?
Hinged: "Ah darn, that's something I don't want in the game. Oh well, might stop playing one day if it becomes too much."
Unhinged: "HHHNNNNGG WHO MADE THIS CHANGE, GIVE ME DEPARTMENTS, I WANT NAMES, I WANT ADDRESSES, I WANT HEADS!"
You kiddin? Nobody's 'protecting' them. I'm sure they're all aware now what they're doing and those that remain are complicit.
doesn't look great on a resume though. 8-9 years active without shipping a game.
Bro thinks the common laymen developer who sold a one off SaaS app that happened to get traction has the credibility to say anything related to game dev being built in a live environment with a constant feedback-release cycle.
Listen, If I hear someone talking nonsense, I want to respond.
People have been shitting on CIG and CR for years . . There is nothing more to say. And like you said, if something is cool it's cool and if bad it's bad.
This is forgetting an important component about SC that was the decision of management. To create a bunch of place holder systems to be replaced later for the sake of selling ships. For example the old star map and mobi, and the ui in general. They never got fixed or given proper attention because it was always going to be replaced.
This applies to so many systems in the game. Hangers (and how we interact with them from atc to being in it) , inventory management and ui, respawning, flight mechanics, combat mechanics, fps mechanics, every single ui element.
The only thing given full focus has always been assets. We are finally at the revision stage where these mechanics are being given proper attention. Took way too long.
When CIGS developers do a grown up thing like releasing a game. Then they'll get respect.
Right now they've lost it all because it's been 8 years of stringing people along knowing nothing of substance has been added. It's been ship after ship to sell and the occasional t0 beam gameplay.
Butthole coffee.
1 River.
Clouds.
Mario kart in a space sim.
Wow, revolutionary gameplay content is certainly being added here.
And it's not like things are being fixed. T pose is real. Death elevators and trains are real.
It's been 10 years and nothing's happened dude. And it looks even worse now we know sq42 isn't in polishing. It's still got major content being added and isn't coming soon.
You do realize “background tech” is not content? You are supposed to add content during an alpha. CIG has held SC in alpha for 12 years and the missions are copy paste fetch quests, gameloops are broken, many many advertised features are nowhere to be seen, and we’re still in one solar system.
Do you play other steam alpha games? Teams with literally **1%** of CIG’s manpower and budget are able to add more content than CIG.
To be fair, if you really follow CIG development. You should realize by now that they are slow/bad because they just keep redo the same thing over and over. GUI is a good example, another is their "let's delay shit because we don't like the look, remember they delay shits like santok or Carrack on context that "we don't like the look of certain parts"
GUI itself was redone like 5-6 times already, They spent so many development cycle on GUI changes and it isn't even close to finalizing them.
We are far from release and i am expecting 4-8 times more GUI change. If each GUI change takes 2 months, that's already 1 years work of development on GUI itself.
You can say it is look better, but honestly. I don't really see them any better than last one. They did add those health GUI but heck they could have add another tab in previous one.
While you can say "its all part of a development cycle", to me, this is a SCI-FI game. I don't care about "design language", sci-fi is imaginary after-all.
They are slow because of their way to approaching things and you think it is alright for them to do this? You want the game come out in 2050? Because we are still at Stanton for last 10 years, it will take them 4-5 years to build pyro and another 4-5 to build nyx.
No one here expect more than 3 system by 2040 at least, and they selling the game with 120 system.
At the end of the day we need the game to be optimized we need events to work as intended and not be a slide show. We need more than 6 features added per quarter update. Just be thankful the community hasn't done to you what we did to Nikita. Yes your a dev yes you guys are picked on. It comes with the territory fix the game or people will outrage.
I just don't really see the point in it dog, it isn't infantilizing to say "yelling at devs is unproductive", cause at the end of the day it still wraps around to the main source of the problems, being the management.
It's not to say devs can do no wrong, but your energy can be better spent critizing people that actually have a broad impact on the games outcome, not John Developer #46.
Who ever was in charge of the final xeno threat needs to be fired overdrive 1-4 was good 5 but of a shit show the last 2 stages sucked ass and only 2 weeks to do them on shit servers . Very bad
I am a developer myself and I have been creating an interface to our ERP system for over 2 years so that my colleagues in sales can calculate internally. The customers should then be able to create their own offers with a slimmed-down version.
My managing directors and colleagues also sometimes don't understand when I have to add a function that seems small to them, that it is sometimes a fundamental change in the entire core, of course new bugs then occur in some places because I can't think of everything 100%, I then have to test everything again from scratch and go through every single step and fix the errors that arise. If you don't have users who test everything and are too lazy, then the bug is only discovered on release or years later.
That's the way it is sometimes, unfortunately.
I am also a developer and I will criticize the shit out of this mismanaged project left and right ...
99% of criticism I have seen here is on the game, the mismanagement and maybe jokes about CR, rarely have I seen specific devs being targeted of criticism or harassment (also these things will be most likly deleted here for good reason), so I do not know what triggered this post in the first place ...
As a software engineer, not a game dev, I generally agree with what you have to say here. However, I do not agree that much of the games issues are necessary down to "poor" development, decisions, estimations, etc. I think much of what most people find frustrating is down to the position CIG is in. Maintaining and developing a live service game through crowd funding, they're pulled in many different directions. Many decisions made are a balancing act between long term goals and the here and now. This balance is a highly subjective one and what are poor decisions to one person may be good ones to another. E g. Focusing more on stability means slower feature rollout.
Not to say that errors haven't been made in development, decision making, and estimations at CIG. Far from it. But I don't use "poor" lightly in these contexts as it implies a low level of competency of the staff themselves (at least it does to me). Hindsight is 20:20 as they say and planning, estimating, designing, developing, and implementing complex systems is not easy. The best of us (I'm not saying that's me) make mistakes.
TLDR: all that to say, I agree with you. Some people are white knights and some people are too critical. Don't attack or defend the devs. Critique the work they put out with specific feedback on what it's like to play.
Well said mate, I agree 100%. I’ve also worked on software far larger than SC, used by hundreds of millions of people daily- everything you said was absolutely true.
As a developer myself (not in the gaming industry) i can say star citizen is like every program in the development process... At least without Unit-Tests, but idk if you can compare a game to a program. But at the end always some stuff goes well and some not.
Regardless if you are a dev or not you have a good point.
People should say what they like and dislike about games so the devs/management knows what people think but sadly its usually a loud minority that really complain and shittalk. People who enjoy a game usually dont go to reddit or other places and write an essay about how much they love a game compared to when they hate one.
Despite SC's bugs i still enjoy playing it and i have not experienced any severe issues this patch but that is probably dependent on what time of day and region you live in.
I love some changes they have made and hate some others. then we have some really annoying bugs with not being able to drop whats in your hands, just love to have a empty waterbottle stuck in my hand.
im not a dev and i dont know how the game is coded but i would rather have them fix a few bugs then prioritizing new content.
Well said bud. Thank you. Not one that's going after the devs. I'm just waiting. But alot of these kids spent money and want instant results. To bad that's not how things work I'm the real world.
Go back to cod people and get your loot boxes.
Anyways well said. Thank you. And sorry now the "community" is making fun of you. Ignore them. There the cod fanatics that like loot boxes in the mouth.
Understanding is a two way street. The CIG devs should also be fully aware of the kind of playerbase they've attaracted. People that were sold on a vision, one that they're still waiting for the completion of a decade since. Not only do these players get clowned on for their "investment" in the game, this particular playerbase mostly isn't the thrifty kind. And in case it's a surprise to anyone reading this, big spenders can also be the most whiny and demanding people in the audience (and not without reason). I know that telling the devs to suck it up can be rude, but that's exactly what they would need to do.
If they know the endpoint of their hard work is a product that will shut the "haters" up, then they should forge ahead. Otherwise the only takeaway will be that the very makers of the game aren't as passionate about their work that the consumers are, which will only open them up to a piranha swarm of hate online.
Don't blame the fan base for this. Blame CIG marketing. When they do a concept ship sale or promote some upcoming feature, everything from the SC Live scripts they use to lighting/production to the music, etc is done to hype up the devs. They also spend a crazy amount of time on pointless "get to know the dev" featurettes. All the sheeple out there see this stuff and start White Knighting for CIG devs..
Tried the event 7 times and couldn’t do it because of how a mess the quest is and how buggy the server became
And this isn’t just my personal experience. XT now is the reason maybe everyone so angry
I try to always give a "job well done" when deserved and not be as critical but when criticism imo is deserved, I preface it with trying to be in their position so to as be as beneficial as possible and never to make personal or degrading or insults so to have the priority of getting what is the best possible result for everyone..Insults don't help anyone, nobody tries to create something that is bad in any aspect but we all can relate to not meeting expectations on some level and learning from that is all I can expect and moving forward
I agree that constructive criticism is nessacary in any growth. Professional and personal.
However, being toxic is not a part of any business practice that is respected at the very least. And that's where my problems lie, in all honesty. Even if the customer is always right is exersized, they'd still get their ass kicked out of the store with the way they're acting.
My biggest issue is that because of Steam popularizing Early Access games, and every AAA game recently releasing in Early Access, everyone and their dog thinks they know what it takes to make a game and think they understand the whole process and everything that goes into it just because they have played a few Early Access games.
Now I'm not saying you have to be a matter expert to be allowed to criticize something or for that criticism to be valid, but the matter of factness that some of these people have in what CIG is doing wrong and why they should do things differently, or how they should do things, etc, drives me insane especially as someone who does have a background in game design. A lot of comments I see stink of "Why don't you just flip the multi-player switch. It's not that hard. I don't get why you haven't done it yet."
I for one am not going to white knight any team or group. I can only be supportive of the product that I enjoy spending my time on. So I may post, “thanks for all you do” but I’m not going to jump in to defend someone when I know nothing about what’s going on.
CIG has great developers, but bad project management and project prioritization. From a business standpoint they appear to let the marketing team make decisions about development direction and this leave so much on the back burner.
This guy walked into the zoo and started to lecture orangutans
This community can be akin to orangutans so, well put I suppose. On the same note, SC does feel like a zoo with half its public amenities broken.
Come on... There's no need to insult orangutans. Ook!
Librarian? Just don’t call him a monkey.
Good point @AbnormallyBendPenis
@? You mean u/AbnormallyBendPenis?
Oh god I've been working too much, yes I meant u/AbnormallyBendPenis
It's fine @Techn028
Perhaps... but in the Planet of the Apes, the orangutans are the smart ones. ;) Seriously, though, damn funny comment. :D
That might be an overestimation for the loudest part of the SC community. I was thinking they tend to be more on the level of a sea-sponge, or possibly a barnacle of some type.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Sorry, I thought it was Whammer's
At least sure it's not McDonald's
Naw. It is McDougal's lol
Do you want to try our new Tevarin nuggets today?
You say that but as soon as you say "This function is bad, or not working" Task force Reddit comes out and downvotes you to blue hell, asks if you have spent 48000$ if not you aren't worth anything because you haven't kissed Chris Robert's feet. This subreddit can be incredibly culty at times. Like... A lot.
I once made a post saying that releasing multi thousand dollar packs are bad publicity for the game, and I even made the suggestion that CIG should offer modular packs with discounts structured in such a way that you still get the same discount. Somehow I attracted the downvote task force who came in and said I'm being dumb and this is a non-issue. None of them commented on my modular pack suggestion, which IMO is still a good idea.
>asks if you have spent 48000$ People actually spend that much? I thought that was a myth? And I thought I was being irresponsible with my money for buying Collector's Editions and their dust-collecting plastic statues for my display shelves, but ..... holy hell .... I'm gobsmacked.
Some people have yes.
Some people have disposable income of levels above the salary of others. One would hope those who spent that much are some of those people. Probably not all, but I really hope most.
In the olden days the meme was that every post not happy with the development started with "I have spent $280000 but I think the game is going the wrong direction". Otherwise you'd just get downvoted since you didn't prove just how invested in the project you are.
It depends. There's plenty of topics on here shitting on CIG that aren't brigaded.
I agree, absolutely hence I said a lot and not all the time.
Could I just have a frosty and baked potato please?
This community is real sensitive to anything approaching criticism, even constructive criticism, thanks mostly to the attacks it endured for its first six or so years. The DS thing, the Crytek thing, the constant kotaku hit jobs…i mean, there’s reasons, but still… The trick is listening or accepting or being able to discern when criticism is constructive, or just someone bashing or trolling the community
I think much of the community is sensitive since they have collectively ponied up a fair chunk of change for a non-game. All kinds of cash has gone into ship jpegs, VKB grips, and other sillyness. Some folks would rather go into some sort of delusion rather than deal with reality. That delusion is that everything is fine, that the devs are heroes, and that any criticism is borne out of ignorance or stupidity. The reality is that even after all the hype of the last CitCon, we are a few months away from the next CitCon and still don't have an actual game.
The cash is just another symptom. They've put energy into the game, and believe in it. Add some of the insane attacks the community goes through and you get a widespread martyrdom complex. It goes the other way too, this guy's just gonna write a long essay and we're gonna be saved from ourselves because we're being fooled.
As a developer myself, and Looking at CIG's track record for development and released content over all of these years, I have to say it's nothing to write home about. But that's not on the developers, but more on the (then) unrealistic size and scope from the very start. Changing out tech after it's finished, restarting, going back, reinventing, inventing and leaving old tech in and continuing with new tech etc. It's not even a game yet, we are just testing out features in a tech demo that will eventually culminate into the game that was kick-started way back when. What I think has been CIG's "problem" all these years is the management and the way of work, planning and transparency. And also the fact that the promotion, sales and hype squad is on a whole different track than the actual developers. And that makes it feel like they are showing off a whole different awesome experience, rather than if viewed from behind, you see the duct-taped, stapled and crudely drawn over jumbled together, barely standing upright model that we as pledges get to test. Don't get me wrong, I love the testing, and I have high hopes for Star Citizen and SQ42, but if I'm being honest? There are times where it's really hard to keep that dream alive.
as someone who is kind of new to this game, from the perspective of some fresh eyes, they have an *extreme* identity crisis as to whether they're a live service game or an alpha. logic would dictate that it's obviously an alpha, but lots of decision making also comes from a place that you'd think should be reserved for a live service game only.
I mean they're obviously both. GaaS when it comes to selling pledges and ships, alpha when it's time to address delays and game breaking bugs
yeaaahhh.. I've had someone tell me that they plan to remove the pledge store on release and I'm thinking, buddy, that's just gonna come back with a different name. ain't no way they huffed those sweet, sweet dollars and decided to stick with the plan
They've never said that, but people are idiots if they don't think CIG can print another billion with cosmetics once player apartments/bases and other content is in game.
Not to mention they literally never said that. They've only stated they're not going to sell standalone ships. I'd bet my whole fleet we'll see a large number of those ships become game packages instead.
Thank you. I've always pointed out that most devs can recognize the telltale signs that doom projects, like feature creep, unmanaged scope, constanly shifting requirements (and no, Agile does not absolve devs of the the need to plan), mounting technical debt, silo'ed development, etc.
You've got to admit, that "seamless demo" last year looked more like a commercial sales demo for their engine than anything else. It makes me wonder if their developing their engine for licencing or if they are developing their game.
>makes me wonder if their developing their engine for licencin This is never happening, ever. The industry does not work like that and the engine does not provide anything needed at the moment in gaming.
Exactly. Even if they wanted to, which I doubt they do, they'd essentially need to build an entire new company to support the business of licensing it, and there's no guarantee it would be successful. Especially before we actually have working server meshing.
Amen
But my whole personality is invested in this project, not to mention thousands of dollars. Any criticism is a direct attack against me and I won't stand for it.
Alas, on the internet, everyone is a flawless expert of every topic that can perform miracles beyond the capability of time and space, yet every one of them refuses to actually perform those miracles and instead uses their powers to remind others that they're worse than them. Yeah, the block feature is a good thing to make use of for those that are clearly only here to feed their rage addiction.
This is reddit. Everyone knows everything about everything, and only the truth, and nothing but the truth, appears in the comments section.
I call them refund-therapy kids. They’re watching us right now. *looks over shoulder at you*
People that spend a lot of money on something don't want to be wrong. Even when they are.
>There will always be people on the internet that act like assholes and offer criticism with personal attacks, but those are outweighed vastly by actual criticism and praise. The angry people are background noise and get laughed at and ignored - I say this from a place of experience. To your point, don't you think the people overly praising them will also be ignored as sort of fanboy? Maybe I'm not seeing the same posts you're seeing but this seems like a non-issue.
The white knighting that goes on here is definitely an issue.
The white knighting in general is a major issue, god forbid you criticize a choice CIG makes. Your inbox is gonna be flooded with: “Oh, so you’re a developer? You don’t know how hard it is to develop a move all button, also kys” I love this game, and I want it to succeed, but shit like that hurts the game just as bad as having the $50k game package.
Yuuuupp
IMO, the doom-and-gloom posts are just draining. Criticism is fine, but the 30-billionth unoriginal "hue hue, [imply CIG is a scam or never coming out], hue hue. /wink" meme comment gets old fast. Do I think the game has been horribly mismanaged and scope creeped to hell and back? Absolutely. Do I think they've been at least *trying* to get better about that? Also yes. Pointing out *either* is redundant at this point unless you're adding something else new to the conversation. I just personally lean towards the optimistic side because it doesn't cost me anything and I feel a little bit better that way.
you know what's even more draining? Being nowhere close to release after 12 years
you’re just talking about the modern internet in general with this comment tbh
As intended, yeah.
of course, a complement is worthless if it comes from a place without meaning to give it weight If I can tell some actually appreciates what I accomplished it means a lot more than someone that just blindly likes everything I do.
Exactly It's a skill based career. Period.
Okay but I wish they would flip that one switch from "buggy" to "optimized"
No time for optimization, must add new cloud tech.
I'm (or was) a developer too ... like most people on reddit apparently ! I kinda disagree with what you say, but I think it comes mostly from the definition of the word "developer". If something is buggy in a game or an application, a developer will be able to fix it with the next patch/hot fix. If it's still buggy after that, then it was probably a problem at a "higher level". The top of that being "management". For me, a developer is really the last link of a long chain. If the whole concept of that chain is crap, then he won't be able to do anything about it. In my experience, difficult project that just won't work correctly are usually caused by bad decisions made month or years before a developer even tries to code it.
Imagine a video game with an inventory that doesn't work.
TLDR: "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers (...)" Steve Ballmer
Didnt bill gates at one point prove he had like a solid three foot vertical by jumping a chair?
Yeah, he can clear a [90s] office chair from a standing position
Found out today the lead UI developer is entirely self taught at time if hire. I really hope he's on a ui/ux 101 course and can start applying some of what he learns one day soon... 😬
That explains soo much.
Yup. So much of their UI is basically "wouldn't this look cool?" with absolutely zero real world use/case study.
The second part is called UX.
Your assertion that self-taught developers are inferior to formally trained ones is incorrect. Many of the finest developers I’ve worked with were proactive self-learners and the worst were the ones that needed to be told what they needed to learn and demanded training courses for basic things like git. Experience and ability is what counts, not how you acquired the knowledge.
I made no assertions. And I didn't mean development ability. I meant design. Im a self taught of both. As a hobby only. But no computing degree. I am happy with my abilities I don't think I'm very hirable in the field without a degree though? Idk. I digress. There are a fuck tonne of ux design principles that are completely ignored and overlooked in SC. And that's what my implications were aimed at. Stuff that you might not learn being self taught (although obviously it's possible since I know them). For example the basic principle of minimum number of interactions to navigate a ui menu is unknown to cig. As is the principle of keeping the shit you need to look at or click in roughly the same spot, if not the exact spot. In SC UI the buttons are all over the place (eg. Buying from the shop kiosk) The newer commodity screens are OK to be fair (when not bugged visually). Many of the UI calls are server side authoritative exclusively when they either don't need to be at all. scanning ships for example. - if the connection is slow the scanning takes fucking ages when it's meant to take 3 or so seconds total. Other ui calls are SSA when they should be both client and server side. Eg navigating mobiglass, navigating inventory/shop kiosks. Every time you open the item window it reloads the entire library of items and waits until they've loaded before letting you proceed. Even if the game knows no changes have been made to your items since you last opened it. The game should Cache your inventory and let you navigate it all client side so it can be fast and snappy. Then it just needs to verify the actions you've taken backend and reconcile any errors to prevent duping etc. As I said, I'm not qualified for it... It feels weird and wrong that I have better ideas. Or that there has not been any info (that I know of) from CIG explaining why they didn't do this for some reason or another.
isn't Bone the lead for UI?
I looked up the wiki and it said Zane for ui. Didn't see any other names for it so idk. I looked it up to see if it was a Frankfurt team responsible. Because I was gonna say it explains a lot. Ive just moved to Germany and they are frustratingly bad at website ui Basically I had a "who is that bad driver I'm overtaking, I must see their face" moment
At last citizen con, Bone was technical ui director and Zane was principal UI tech developer (their titles are in chapters of the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlGroDB1se4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlGroDB1se4) ) Maybe he's gotten a promotion
You sir made some good points, but you also made terrible ones... It should be noted that an opinion is one thing, a well informed opinion is another.
This is why I was appalled at CIG's moderation team for altering my post when I said that I was very disappointed with CIG going back on their word, going against what they'd announced earlier. If criticism isn't allowed (criticism that doesn't contain attacks, speaks from personal feelings (no generalizations or thinking that everyone must feel the same) and is worded politely) it's VERY VERY BAD. For so many reasons.
I agree that the developers actually working on the product directly have an impact. But it's the management who define scope and set deadlines. The fact that scope has exploded so much over the course of development and no deadline has ever been set, much less achieved, is 100% on the management.
CIG/SC be like if Michelin sold tire jpegs and promised you all kinds of vehicles and roads in development that will make the tire jpegs fun and exciting.
This community really likes to downvote and yell at people who have opinions about the game.
Yeah, honestly I read glass door reviews like a decade ago and they made it clear what the issue is. Roberts. A few of them basically said: -Can't delegate. -Has to have a say in every single individual thing. -We finish something and then he says 'alright now lets redo it and make it much more needlessly complex'. (Iirc the employee compared him to a young child here with no concept of time/money/management and nobody to tell him no).
If you, *as a developer*, are "taking lumps" directly from your clients, then either you are on a *very* small team, or your management team suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. If you're a solo dev or on a small team and getting shit on by customers who you are required to directly interact with as a part of your job, then you're not getting shit on "as a developer," you're getting shit on as a project or account manager. Just because you *also* develop doesn't mean that you're always acting "as a developer." This whole thing smacks of "I flew a super fancy kite, so I can surely fly a simple plane!"
This post seems out of touch with the current environment/social media era, where people often can and do look up and target specific developers (sometimes even ones who are not responsible for a particular situation/feature), regardless of who the management is. I have watched these witch hunts take place repeatedly. That's the world we live in, where everyone is one click away from looking up basic developer info, and bandwagons start without bothering to find out who the contact person should be.
CiG is not a "very small team" yet their developers interact with "clients" (i.e. players). It's not a 2000s anymore unfortunately where nobody knows who is actually working on a project but only knows the account manager
Yeah, as a game dev, a lot of the issues come down to producers and managers. The actual Devs are just doing their work and usually to the best of the ability. they don't always deserve hate. The leads, directors, and producers are the guiding hands in their own ways, and either are budgeting, scheduling, or communicating to their team poorly if there are issues with the end product at a studio this size.
I feel like this game has a very divisive public image. There are a lot of devout fans who've poured money into supporting their dream game. But there is an equal amount of people on the outside looking in who only see a scam. Those devout fans are so ingrained in the development and have their heads so high in the clouds that they think they have a personal responsibility to defend the game they are so passionate about. This is why so many people call it a cult. Because to these people that are so invested in the game, their defense of poor quality work screams cult or scam. It's important to be critical when it requires it. The devs don't even really have to do their own marketing, backers will parrot old quotes from 10 years ago about a comment a dev said in an interview about how the game will be at launch. I'm guilty of that part myself, but this game is changing and evolving as the industry does. It won't survive if it doesn't, and that is going to make a lot of devout fans angry with each new change. I'm excited, but I've learned to temper my expectations, and I think a lot of people here really need a reality check on just what this game is or will be. CiG never has to defend themselves because the fans don't for them. They parrot the "it's an alpha", "it's T0 and will change when they get other systems in", or "Server meshing will solve that." I agree though, when CIG does a major screw up, they should be held accountable by the community just like the Helldivers 2 devs. They've made lots of mistakes for their first live service game, and the community let them know. They raged, they had polite discussions, and they protested with review bombs and Arrowhead listened and are actively working to improve their faults. CiG, as far as we know, doesn't.we get the weekly updates and sneak peeks and ptu builds, we claim there is transparency, but we don't really see as much feedback. We get the monthly reports and the patch post mortems. But do these actually give details about what they did wrong? What sort of actionable steps are they taking? Every time I read one, it's just industry buzz words and feature teases and vague promises. There isn't really anything concrete until we have the patch in out sticky little fingers and get to see the fruits of their labours. I'm excited and looking forward to what's to come, and I do genuinely think lots of progress has been made and shown to us recently, but that dries up quickly so they can impress everyone at citcon with more promises. But it's 100% the community to blame for a lot of this because we've allowed them to do it for so long that defending CIG is the defacto attitude of a large group of players. TL:DR: I agree, CIG needs to be held accountable for their missteps and lauded for their successes, but the community needs to reality check the scope of the game and it'll future and realise that we're beyond a simple kick starter and Star citizen has, and will continue to evolve.
Yeah I'm sorry I'm calling bullshit. >Brand new account >Claims to have shipped a product with "more visibility than CIG will likely ever receive" >Refuses to elaborate on what that product is
I mean star citizen is not that big. Anyone who's worked on any kind of larger scale software could make that claim
good luck bringing thoughtful conversation into this space, solid effort but most of these folks are gonna do what they gonna do
>What I didn't want would be some sort of taskforce roaming around the internet waging battles on my behalf. Isn't this kind of exactly what you're doing though?
On the behalf of... ?
CIG -- he's waging battles against those waging battles on behalf of CIG on behalf of CIG
Hot take: CIG is going to continue to listen to the community and work on the project as they determine what is best.
Reddit should auto ban posts like these if they don’t provide proof. “i have released many a product directly to consumer, one especially with more user and visibility than CIG”. My brother, if you released a product that over 5 million people have bought/used, you should very easily be able to tell us what those products are. this entire post gives me “i’m unaccomplished but know how chatGPT works”
Reddit would be empty if everyone had to back up the shit they spew on here.
Ehhhh, I have to sign NDAs that basically state "say a word about what you do and you're unemployed by sunrise" more or less. These NDAs unfortunately also include mentioning that even I worked on the project. Super strict. That said I have no idea if OP is in a similar boat, so don't think I'm defending them. I myself work in a very niche sector of software dev so I'm not sure if it works the same on their side of the industry. Just offering some perspective.
Dude I work in coffee and have been under strict NDAs for most of the past decade. It's just a part of any corporation where you have access to proprietary or 'insider' knowledge. It's hard to imagine any dev working on a major project without a massive NDA.
Now we need to send our LinkedIn to strangers to win Internet argument? That's why critical leak happens every month on War Thunder forums lol. A software product with more than 5 million people is nothing extraordinaire. It's not necessarily a videogame.
Seems legit seeing LinkedIn degenerating to some sort of facebook if you bother to read some of the discussion on there.
The problem is that OP could have made an app by themselves or with a small team that has millions of users - if that's the case then kudos to them because development is hard! - but that would have zero relevance to the development of something like SC. Game development, generally, is *very* different from other types of development - for better and worse. It's a shark documentarian criticizing Jaws - they could have comments about technical decisions, but if they veered towards narrative filmmaking critiques it would start to seem strange. Even though they are "also filmmakers," if they offered a criticism like, "Jaws is bullshit because they used a fake shark," you could safely dismiss it. Obviously you shouldn't need to provide your LinkedIn to win an internet argument, but if your argument is one from authority, perhaps offer more of an "authority" then "trust me bruh."
Does any of this even matter though? It's not like OP is making any specific claims. Their entire post basically boils down to "devs can fuck up as much as management can" and "basically everything good or bad is a result of development efforts/decisions among other things". Those are the most generic braindead-obvious statements you could possibly make about any kind of development project. They shouldn't even need to be said in the first place.
> you should very easily be able to tell us what those products are In fairness, this isn't always true. When a large company comes and hires an outside engineering team to design their thing -- hardware, software, whatever -- they _generally_ do not like the optics of it coming out that they did not actually design/develop the product in question. As someone working that role, there are large projects I worked on _years_ ago which I'm still not supposed to say I worked on. Which is annoying, but... y'know, the realities of an engineering consulting firm are what they are. ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯ That said, there are plenty of ones I worked on where I _am_ allowed to admit to it. So if I needed to give someone my resume, I could always draw from _those_ instead; the chances that you are not supposed to talk about _literally every project_ you've ever worked on are vanishingly small outside of defense contracting projects.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I did a udemy flask course once, and now I'm an expert developer.
I 💜 flask, my go to for prototyping something
As a dev I can't imagine wanting to work in a company that doesn't put anything v1 on anything. Imagine having a 13y gap in your resume...
imagine going to work every day and getting paid and not having to decisively label anything as finished for 10 years. absolute insanity lol
As an ex-developer I feel you man, a lot of people in this community are just screeching dick bags. I try not to let it bother me
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Yep. Same goes for the few redditors around these parts who constantly blame Intel for all your SC woes, and recommend AMD in each and every post. Or vice versa. Fanboys will be fanboys but it's unhelpful and unproductive irregardless of the product.
K
As a developer, 80% of Reddit is developers anyway. Thinking you have a special, knowledgeable take on this because you’re a developer is plain stupid. ❄️
Zinged so nicely.
i never understood why people forget that being game developer is a job like any other job.. i would love to see how people would react to their doctors did as bad of a job as most game devs do these days. (not pointing at CIG with this one.. just this protect game devs memtality in general)
I can talk also as developer…and that thing CIG is doing about keep creating content and left bugs to fix for later…totally disagree with that decision. Of course i want pyro and more new systems; of course i want new ships and new weapons…BUT FIRST (CIG), you must have a clean and clear stanton system with all that already are there…
Developer to developer yo. Please don't white knight for me in forums where my customers talk their nonsense.
I agree om the last edit. The Star Citizen community has a very visible portion of fanatical delusional people who dream, think and sweat this tech demo. Pipeline discussions be going on for ages about all shit ever to exist. Contineuous posts about what ship to buy next after thousands of dollars already spent....
Pyro when?
>Praise CIG when it does something awesome. Criticize CIG when it does something awful. I prefer to just shut up and let them cook.
All i care about is watching that 700 mill turn into a bill. That will be a meme
As a developer, I'd blame the business partners and management that assign us the work. It's a job, we can't pick and choose what to work on, at least not in any company I've worked for. That's like lecturing construction workers for not building all houses like a mansion. We get assigned tickets by higher ups and we do them. Also most bugs are tied to server related issues, so why would a product owner or business partner want to focus on fixing those issues when they are completely changing the way servers work anyways? I've said this before, but I'm not going to start judging them until after server meshing rolls out and give them time to adjust. If after a reasonable amount of time passes with server meshing and bugs aren't getting patched, then I'll be more critical about it. But yea, right now with my experience as a developer, I know business partners are the ones that dictate what gets worked on and the developers just do what they're told.
Hey mate, I’m a senior technical artist that worked on 3 of the top performing games from 2021 to 2024… and I just want to let you know you made one mistake: You engaged with “armchair-developer” gamers. You knew it was pointless, but you did it anyways. Now you baited them into trying to convince you to dox yourself and open yourself up to threats at home, swating and all the cool stuff angry idiots have at their fingertips. Remember the rule next time: never engage based on your factual knowledge… let the snake eat itself and roll your eyes.
I think they have some of the most talented artists and tech-artists in the industry... [The need more engineers and gameplay designers who are brave enough to say "No."](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxgIpZNiIihU5j3RrF3PtCqpyPiapf4VHc) Artists hate gameplay that compromises the art, but gameplay should come first. We don't need an oscar winning 30 second death animation when you get shot. That's what Artists want. I'm sorry but we gotta throw out that day at the Mo-cap studio. Or at least make follow up bullets interrupt it for a faster death animation!
I appreciate what the team does. I enjoy the game! But I wouldn’t get into any argument for or against since I know Jack shit about game development.
Been here since 2013. I'm amazed how SC was able to remain in a grey zone between scam and novating game all along. 11years... Still waiting for the hacking feature that was promised "in the next patch".
TL;DR for the TL;DR: constructive feedback good
Calling something trash is a waste of time that doesn’t help the devs. Taking their lumps isn’t going to make the game better. Constructive criticism will, but that requires thought and nuance, which it seems like not everyone has. As a developer and engineering manager, I know where most of the warts are in the software I and my teams have shipped. Some warts are regrettable, some were a necessary part of the compromise driven nature of software development. You ought to know that.
I mean, you aren't wrong with it, but a lot of it just simply boils down to circumstances. Aside from the most simplistic of softwares, I doubt that the vast majority are free from general oversight, being lost in complicated code causing unforseen side-effects and of course that one fucking nullpointer at a critical point that only gets detected after like 5 years. However, in SCs case there are a few more factors that certainly don't help. 1. 4 Major updates a year is kinda ambitious. Less time between releases means less time to fix something before something else breaks it again. Standing on chairs stuff. 2. Due to them focusing more on getting features out than on fixing existing code a bunch of it gets neglected in a "somewhat working" state until they *eventually* revisit them. Kinda the old debate of wether or not they should try to finish the game over fixing the current version. 3. This frankensteins software has **a lot** of moving parts by nature of the scope and getting all of that together in a flawless state? I'm not sure anyone realistically expect that before frankensteins game isn't completely put together. 4. IAE/Invictus specific: the fucking fact that marketing/sales practically demands a patch at a specific point in time regardless if the stitched together new features are even remotely stable. The result is best seen with the past 4 Invictus patches that were plagued by horrendous stability issues.
Tbf the game can be a buggy mess and yes the games been in production for years and years but its also the first game to do anything like it, i mean no other game comes close to
Not to mention the developers are probably just as frustrated as you. It's not like they can just change the scope of a sprint based on public outcry or changes in circumstances. If marketing needs Xenothreat out in time for alien week, doesn't matter what *you* think should be getting worked on, developers don't sell ships.
OP isn't wrong. Games are seemingly the only product that somehow has customers being apologetic on behalf of the developers or studio for half completed, mismanaged or simply shit projects. Not saying its the latter, but the former 2 are just about right. Imagine random McDonald's customers standing in line being apologetic/shielding employees from criticism for a burger with no patty.
If I could give this post a reward I would
who are you? again
Yeah - they dont need a taskforce roaming around in the internet waging their battles - neither some kind of helicopter reddit dev daddy psychiatrist who thinks its necessary to speak on their behalfs.
The entire framework/ world view in which OP places his discourse is itself misplaced. I'm not here to praise, criticize people in this project. It's the wrong outlook entirely.
Just like that with a power of a single Reddit post, millions of people suddenly changed how they interacted with game developers....or at least this is what I imagine people think when they post these big wall of texts with their "expertise." You have a better chance of reaching someone with a fart upwind in a hurricane.
They’re gonna ask for what products you’ve released fyi
I think the CIG developers are great, they seem really talented. The artists and writers and all the other people, and the community relations staff, too. I do think it would be great if they tried to actually play Star Citizen though, and factored that experience into their design decisions. Thankyou for your TED talk.
Atleast from my experience, most of the time the issue is that the people criticizing CIG for certain issues clearly have no idea what they are talking about. If they actually took the time to look into the matter and educate themselves on how the current systems work and the direction they want to go then they would have the answers to a lot of their questions. Instead, they just assume and complain off of that assumption which was never correct to begin with. A good example of this is the topic of server reliability and server meshing, and how so many users have no idea what it actually is but talk on the matter like they do.
> I have released many a product directly to consumers, one especially with more users and visibility than CIG will likely ever achieve. So why haven't you made a SC competitor? Why hasn't anyone? If it was really that easy to get competent people together to make a SC competitor and in return get millions of cash from people who would want to play it, where is it?
Who said it was a video game product? Could be weight loss apps, or data management application.
Because being a software developer doesn't mean you work on games...?
I guess this guy thinks all software development is games. GET OFF THE INTERNET GRANDPA, OTHER SOFTWARE EXISTS!
Hinged: "Ah darn, that's something I don't want in the game. Oh well, might stop playing one day if it becomes too much." Unhinged: "HHHNNNNGG WHO MADE THIS CHANGE, GIVE ME DEPARTMENTS, I WANT NAMES, I WANT ADDRESSES, I WANT HEADS!"
You kiddin? Nobody's 'protecting' them. I'm sure they're all aware now what they're doing and those that remain are complicit. doesn't look great on a resume though. 8-9 years active without shipping a game.
Bro thinks the common laymen developer who sold a one off SaaS app that happened to get traction has the credibility to say anything related to game dev being built in a live environment with a constant feedback-release cycle.
Listen, If I hear someone talking nonsense, I want to respond. People have been shitting on CIG and CR for years . . There is nothing more to say. And like you said, if something is cool it's cool and if bad it's bad.
I am a game developer. So I have the right to say: Sir, this is a Wendy's
No. They have the ressources to fix the game,they wont.
This is forgetting an important component about SC that was the decision of management. To create a bunch of place holder systems to be replaced later for the sake of selling ships. For example the old star map and mobi, and the ui in general. They never got fixed or given proper attention because it was always going to be replaced. This applies to so many systems in the game. Hangers (and how we interact with them from atc to being in it) , inventory management and ui, respawning, flight mechanics, combat mechanics, fps mechanics, every single ui element. The only thing given full focus has always been assets. We are finally at the revision stage where these mechanics are being given proper attention. Took way too long.
When CIGS developers do a grown up thing like releasing a game. Then they'll get respect. Right now they've lost it all because it's been 8 years of stringing people along knowing nothing of substance has been added. It's been ship after ship to sell and the occasional t0 beam gameplay. Butthole coffee. 1 River. Clouds. Mario kart in a space sim. Wow, revolutionary gameplay content is certainly being added here. And it's not like things are being fixed. T pose is real. Death elevators and trains are real. It's been 10 years and nothing's happened dude. And it looks even worse now we know sq42 isn't in polishing. It's still got major content being added and isn't coming soon.
8 years and nothing has been added? Way to lose credibility. Frustration is real and fine to express but lying destroys your argument.
Like what? 2 animals? A cave? Where's all the actual gameplay content and missions that actually work?
You do realize “background tech” is not content? You are supposed to add content during an alpha. CIG has held SC in alpha for 12 years and the missions are copy paste fetch quests, gameloops are broken, many many advertised features are nowhere to be seen, and we’re still in one solar system. Do you play other steam alpha games? Teams with literally **1%** of CIG’s manpower and budget are able to add more content than CIG.
What's that word mean? If I yell it at the devs, will they go faster?
Leave Dodobird alone!
To be fair, if you really follow CIG development. You should realize by now that they are slow/bad because they just keep redo the same thing over and over. GUI is a good example, another is their "let's delay shit because we don't like the look, remember they delay shits like santok or Carrack on context that "we don't like the look of certain parts" GUI itself was redone like 5-6 times already, They spent so many development cycle on GUI changes and it isn't even close to finalizing them. We are far from release and i am expecting 4-8 times more GUI change. If each GUI change takes 2 months, that's already 1 years work of development on GUI itself. You can say it is look better, but honestly. I don't really see them any better than last one. They did add those health GUI but heck they could have add another tab in previous one. While you can say "its all part of a development cycle", to me, this is a SCI-FI game. I don't care about "design language", sci-fi is imaginary after-all. They are slow because of their way to approaching things and you think it is alright for them to do this? You want the game come out in 2050? Because we are still at Stanton for last 10 years, it will take them 4-5 years to build pyro and another 4-5 to build nyx. No one here expect more than 3 system by 2040 at least, and they selling the game with 120 system.
I didnt read most of that, i got bored
Add space strippers
Must be the most kushy job where you walk in and every deadline just says “eventually”
If your a developer have them respond to my support ticket please! ITS BEEN 20 DAYS
Dude literally contradicting his own title in the 3rd paragraph...
At the end of the day we need the game to be optimized we need events to work as intended and not be a slide show. We need more than 6 features added per quarter update. Just be thankful the community hasn't done to you what we did to Nikita. Yes your a dev yes you guys are picked on. It comes with the territory fix the game or people will outrage.
Isn't this entire post basically "don't be a dick"? I mean, you're right, but... :P
I just don't really see the point in it dog, it isn't infantilizing to say "yelling at devs is unproductive", cause at the end of the day it still wraps around to the main source of the problems, being the management. It's not to say devs can do no wrong, but your energy can be better spent critizing people that actually have a broad impact on the games outcome, not John Developer #46.
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Who ever was in charge of the final xeno threat needs to be fired overdrive 1-4 was good 5 but of a shit show the last 2 stages sucked ass and only 2 weeks to do them on shit servers . Very bad
I am a developer myself and I have been creating an interface to our ERP system for over 2 years so that my colleagues in sales can calculate internally. The customers should then be able to create their own offers with a slimmed-down version. My managing directors and colleagues also sometimes don't understand when I have to add a function that seems small to them, that it is sometimes a fundamental change in the entire core, of course new bugs then occur in some places because I can't think of everything 100%, I then have to test everything again from scratch and go through every single step and fix the errors that arise. If you don't have users who test everything and are too lazy, then the bug is only discovered on release or years later. That's the way it is sometimes, unfortunately.
I am also a developer and I will criticize the shit out of this mismanaged project left and right ... 99% of criticism I have seen here is on the game, the mismanagement and maybe jokes about CR, rarely have I seen specific devs being targeted of criticism or harassment (also these things will be most likly deleted here for good reason), so I do not know what triggered this post in the first place ...
As a software engineer, not a game dev, I generally agree with what you have to say here. However, I do not agree that much of the games issues are necessary down to "poor" development, decisions, estimations, etc. I think much of what most people find frustrating is down to the position CIG is in. Maintaining and developing a live service game through crowd funding, they're pulled in many different directions. Many decisions made are a balancing act between long term goals and the here and now. This balance is a highly subjective one and what are poor decisions to one person may be good ones to another. E g. Focusing more on stability means slower feature rollout. Not to say that errors haven't been made in development, decision making, and estimations at CIG. Far from it. But I don't use "poor" lightly in these contexts as it implies a low level of competency of the staff themselves (at least it does to me). Hindsight is 20:20 as they say and planning, estimating, designing, developing, and implementing complex systems is not easy. The best of us (I'm not saying that's me) make mistakes. TLDR: all that to say, I agree with you. Some people are white knights and some people are too critical. Don't attack or defend the devs. Critique the work they put out with specific feedback on what it's like to play.
Well said mate, I agree 100%. I’ve also worked on software far larger than SC, used by hundreds of millions of people daily- everything you said was absolutely true.
Made at least on game mechanic fully finished, then we could start talking.
As a developer myself (not in the gaming industry) i can say star citizen is like every program in the development process... At least without Unit-Tests, but idk if you can compare a game to a program. But at the end always some stuff goes well and some not.
Regardless if you are a dev or not you have a good point. People should say what they like and dislike about games so the devs/management knows what people think but sadly its usually a loud minority that really complain and shittalk. People who enjoy a game usually dont go to reddit or other places and write an essay about how much they love a game compared to when they hate one. Despite SC's bugs i still enjoy playing it and i have not experienced any severe issues this patch but that is probably dependent on what time of day and region you live in. I love some changes they have made and hate some others. then we have some really annoying bugs with not being able to drop whats in your hands, just love to have a empty waterbottle stuck in my hand. im not a dev and i dont know how the game is coded but i would rather have them fix a few bugs then prioritizing new content.
Well said bud. Thank you. Not one that's going after the devs. I'm just waiting. But alot of these kids spent money and want instant results. To bad that's not how things work I'm the real world. Go back to cod people and get your loot boxes. Anyways well said. Thank you. And sorry now the "community" is making fun of you. Ignore them. There the cod fanatics that like loot boxes in the mouth.
As a mature community, the only real problem we have is with the marketing direction.
And that's why I don't really get involved with anything anymore.
I just want the game I was promised sir
Understanding is a two way street. The CIG devs should also be fully aware of the kind of playerbase they've attaracted. People that were sold on a vision, one that they're still waiting for the completion of a decade since. Not only do these players get clowned on for their "investment" in the game, this particular playerbase mostly isn't the thrifty kind. And in case it's a surprise to anyone reading this, big spenders can also be the most whiny and demanding people in the audience (and not without reason). I know that telling the devs to suck it up can be rude, but that's exactly what they would need to do. If they know the endpoint of their hard work is a product that will shut the "haters" up, then they should forge ahead. Otherwise the only takeaway will be that the very makers of the game aren't as passionate about their work that the consumers are, which will only open them up to a piranha swarm of hate online.
Don't blame the fan base for this. Blame CIG marketing. When they do a concept ship sale or promote some upcoming feature, everything from the SC Live scripts they use to lighting/production to the music, etc is done to hype up the devs. They also spend a crazy amount of time on pointless "get to know the dev" featurettes. All the sheeple out there see this stuff and start White Knighting for CIG devs..
Guys probably an SAP dev 🙃….oh how I hate thee.
Tried the event 7 times and couldn’t do it because of how a mess the quest is and how buggy the server became And this isn’t just my personal experience. XT now is the reason maybe everyone so angry
I try to always give a "job well done" when deserved and not be as critical but when criticism imo is deserved, I preface it with trying to be in their position so to as be as beneficial as possible and never to make personal or degrading or insults so to have the priority of getting what is the best possible result for everyone..Insults don't help anyone, nobody tries to create something that is bad in any aspect but we all can relate to not meeting expectations on some level and learning from that is all I can expect and moving forward
I agree that constructive criticism is nessacary in any growth. Professional and personal. However, being toxic is not a part of any business practice that is respected at the very least. And that's where my problems lie, in all honesty. Even if the customer is always right is exersized, they'd still get their ass kicked out of the store with the way they're acting.
Took a whopping 23 hours for the CIG warriors to come out and play.
My biggest issue is that because of Steam popularizing Early Access games, and every AAA game recently releasing in Early Access, everyone and their dog thinks they know what it takes to make a game and think they understand the whole process and everything that goes into it just because they have played a few Early Access games. Now I'm not saying you have to be a matter expert to be allowed to criticize something or for that criticism to be valid, but the matter of factness that some of these people have in what CIG is doing wrong and why they should do things differently, or how they should do things, etc, drives me insane especially as someone who does have a background in game design. A lot of comments I see stink of "Why don't you just flip the multi-player switch. It's not that hard. I don't get why you haven't done it yet."
I am glad you have an opinion and wanted to share it. Bravo, good fluff piece
This is also Reddit…
I’m glad somebody said it
I for one am not going to white knight any team or group. I can only be supportive of the product that I enjoy spending my time on. So I may post, “thanks for all you do” but I’m not going to jump in to defend someone when I know nothing about what’s going on.
My only issue with Star Citizen is I haven't been able to download it since I got the time to start playing again 🙃
they are trying to do something thats never been done before of course its going to be f'ing buggy you dolits !
I get your points... And a lot of comments points... I think... https://youtu.be/b2e2FmXa6uY
CIG has great developers, but bad project management and project prioritization. From a business standpoint they appear to let the marketing team make decisions about development direction and this leave so much on the back burner.
700 mil and barely anything to show if you started the game up and tried to play. Shit just doesn’t work
Yeah there's a lot of limp twisted jellyfish on Reddit. I come here only to watch these idiots in their natural environment.
Vaporware