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Scam Citizen/Squadron 42 News Thread

AJUMP23

Member
I also think it is Robert's brother that is in charge of SQ42 development. Right now the bank seems to keep the money coming so there is no reason for them to finish anything. Future promises are still selling.
 

Dr.Morris79

Member
7fJmKui.gif
 

harmny

Banned
I also think it is Robert's brother that is in charge of SQ42 development. Right now the bank seems to keep the money coming so there is no reason for them to finish anything. Future promises are still selling.

Yes. In fact recently chris published a letter using cyberpunk as an example of how bad the situation can be if you release an unpolished game so they are going to take the time they need. 2026 here we come
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Glanced at that wrong and thought the 2951 was the estimated completion date. Probably would have been way to optimistic.
I thought the 2951 meant how many PR blurbs they done the past 8 years.

I heard blurb #2952 is going to be $60,000 mtx for an Ultra Condor Valkyrie Super Frigate.
 
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lefty1117

Gold Member
Almost all of that was taken in-game, but to be clear it's highly staged and somewhat misleading in terms of actual gameplay. Still though, you can see the potential and why it seems so alluring to a lot of people. If they can ever deliver, then WOW. But it's very slow going and it's hard to see it ever really living up to what people are hoping. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm more skeptical than not.
 

ShadowNate

Member
Making good promo videos was never the weak point of the Star Citizen scam.
In fact it's where the put the most money in the early years (and it showed), and apparently they also did take a huge amount of money for marketing of SQ42 a couple of years ago, too.

So, if you're dazzled by the videos... you're expected to.

They are not delivering the game(s) any time soon.
 

Sentenza

Member
I feel always so conflicted about Star Citizen threads.
On one hand people who call it a "fraud" or "a scam" have absolutely no fucking clue of what they are blabbing about,
On the other hand, I'm the first to be more than jaded about the incompetence of the entire production, between one of the most blatant cases of feature creep in the industry, the obsession to want to deliver something that it may not even be technically feasible in the form they promised it and the constant delays.

What's more infuriating is the obscene amount of resourced "invested" (let's say "wasted") in the attempt to achieve the most fancy stuff while still having to nail down some absolute fundamentals.
And of course the "big technological breakthrough" that will finally make the whole thing work is constantly supposed to be few months down the line, except when it arrives it hardly delivers and the promise shift on the next tech. Data streaming, thatobject-container thingy, server mashing, the Vulkan render... There's always something coming that will solve a lot, except it never seems to do it.
 

hlm666

Member
I feel always so conflicted about Star Citizen threads.
On one hand people who call it a "fraud" or "a scam" have absolutely no fucking clue of what they are blabbing about,
On the other hand, I'm the first to be more than jaded about the incompetence of the entire production, between one of the most blatant cases of feature creep in the industry, the obsession to want to deliver something that it may not even be technically feasible in the form they promised it and the constant delays.

What's more infuriating is the obscene amount of resourced "invested" (let's say "wasted") in the attempt to achieve the most fancy stuff while still having to nail down some absolute fundamentals.
And of course the "big technological breakthrough" that will finally make the whole thing work is constantly supposed to be few months down the line, except when it arrives it hardly delivers and the promise shift on the next tech. Data streaming, thatobject-container thingy, server mashing, the Vulkan render... There's always something coming that will solve a lot, except it never seems to do it.

Doesn't help that somehow frontier are going from the other direction with elite dangerous, starting with a small scope and expending over time and are starting to get there before star cit. I just wanted the wing commander campaign thing the kickstarter was about, god knows whats up with that.
 

Sentenza

Member
To be fair the feedback from the Elite beta didn't sound too hot, most of the issues seem to be surprisingly similar to the ones plaguing SC at the moment.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
I feel always so conflicted about Star Citizen threads.
On one hand people who call it a "fraud" or "a scam" have absolutely no fucking clue of what they are blabbing about,
On the other hand, I'm the first to be more than jaded about the incompetence of the entire production, between one of the most blatant cases of feature creep in the industry, the obsession to want to deliver something that it may not even be technically feasible in the form they promised it and the constant delays.

What's more infuriating is the obscene amount of resourced "invested" (let's say "wasted") in the attempt to achieve the most fancy stuff while still having to nail down some absolute fundamentals.
And of course the "big technological breakthrough" that will finally make the whole thing work is constantly supposed to be few months down the line, except when it arrives it hardly delivers and the promise shift on the next tech. Data streaming, thatobject-container thingy, server mashing, the Vulkan render... There's always something coming that will solve a lot, except it never seems to do it.
I agree, I've been following this since its first reveal and i have this admit it's constantly off in the distance with each new big thing promising the world but never does.

Hey it doesn't bother me one bit what grown ass adults fling their money on but to call it a scam is a bit much when you can clearly see where the money is going and where's it's being spent, this dude is a fucking dreamer and is trying to build the ultimate space world to live inside of and technically it's a fucking dozey of a problem to figure out especially with his constant feature creep

Surely by now there should be a red line in the sand with no additional features to be added or is it simply a case of what's actually there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to keep players engaged for long and everytime they try to add these additional gameplay prolonging features they either break current systems or find out more stuff is needed to get it to work, sounds to me they're in a catch 22 situation and can't figure out how to get out of it.

Anyways I for one hope it works out and they create the game that's been in Roberts head all this time cause it looks fucking incredible
 

Starfield

Member
I agree, I've been following this since its first reveal and i have this admit it's constantly off in the distance with each new big thing promising the world but never does.

Hey it doesn't bother me one bit what grown ass adults fling their money on but to call it a scam is a bit much when you can clearly see where the money is going and where's it's being spent, this dude is a fucking dreamer and is trying to build the ultimate space world to live inside of and technically it's a fucking dozey of a problem to figure out especially with his constant feature creep

Surely by now there should be a red line in the sand with no additional features to be added or is it simply a case of what's actually there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to keep players engaged for long and everytime they try to add these additional gameplay prolonging features they either break current systems or find out more stuff is needed to get it to work, sounds to me they're in a catch 22 situation and can't figure out how to get out of it.

Anyways I for one hope it works out and they create the game that's been in Roberts head all this time cause it looks fucking incredible
Feature creep is one of SC's biggest problem if not THE major problem. You're right. Even the community is for the most of it complaining about it. Like they already have SO MANY things to work on and suddenly they reveal useless stuff like "OH WE GOT TROLLEYS NOW WORKING IN THE GAME, COMING TO YOU IN 3.13". Like okay, its a neat small feature you can play around with but on the other hand bigger and much more important features like SALVAGE getting delayed a 100th time (okay, Salvage tier 0 is actually on the roadmap now -again- coming with Patch 3.15 but we will see)
 
Feature creep is one of SC's biggest problem if not THE major problem. You're right. Even the community is for the most of it complaining about it. Like they already have SO MANY things to work on and suddenly they reveal useless stuff like "OH WE GOT TROLLEYS NOW WORKING IN THE GAME, COMING TO YOU IN 3.13". Like okay, its a neat small feature you can play around with but on the other hand bigger and much more important features like SALVAGE getting delayed a 100th time (okay, Salvage tier 0 is actually on the roadmap now -again- coming with Patch 3.15 but we will see)
This is what happens when you have a man in charge that has no idea what he is doing. At best, he is an impatient kid in a toy store that wants to buy all the neat stuff but his mom is on a budget.
 
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ShadowNate

Member
Oh, yeah it is a scam.
I don't know how anyone can defend perpetual crowd funding for a project that sold virtual land.
Try to fit that in the justification of this trash fire.
 

Trimesh

Banned
Feature creep is one of SC's biggest problem if not THE major problem. You're right. Even the community is for the most of it complaining about it. Like they already have SO MANY things to work on and suddenly they reveal useless stuff like "OH WE GOT TROLLEYS NOW WORKING IN THE GAME, COMING TO YOU IN 3.13". Like okay, its a neat small feature you can play around with but on the other hand bigger and much more important features like SALVAGE getting delayed a 100th time (okay, Salvage tier 0 is actually on the roadmap now -again- coming with Patch 3.15 but we will see)

The problem is that in software development the first 70/80/90% (depending on the complexity) of stuff is fun to implement because you can really feel yourself making progress. The last 30/20/10% isn't because it starts to get grindy and you find you have stuff that doesn't work and you have to tear apart other systems to make it work, which is not fun. This is precisely why it's essential to keep the scope under control - if you don't, then everyone is going to want to work on the shiny new feature that's still in the fun phase while accumulating ever increasing amounts of technical debt. Worse, the undefined scope even provides a semi-reasonable justification for doing thing - because you can legitimately say "well, we need to finish X, but that interacts with Y and Y is still heavily WIP so we can't be quite sure what the implications are right now - so we plan to finish X after Y is done". Of course what then happens is that new shiny feature(tm) Z appears and that seems to have the potential to impact Y so the people working on that hold off and that further delays X.

The other problem is that if you decide to say "fuck this, we are going to finish X" then you run a distinct risk of doing work that's going to end up being shitcanned because you end up making ultimately invalid assumptions about what Y is going to do and how - or end up with kludged workarounds to try and tie it all together.

IMO, the biggest problem with Star Citizen that that the overall scope is now so vast and terrifying that trying to work out what the required feature set of any specific subsystem is is somewhere in the range between "really fucking hard" and "impossible".

I was one of the original KS backers, but at this point I have significant doubts it's ever going to be finished.
 

MrTentakel

Member
Keep the dreams alive and "earn" very good money the next decades or release a game which cannot deliver on the incredible hype created?
hmmm, difficult decision

@all the people who procaim it cannot be a scam because people are working-> hahahahahaha
Bernie Madoff had staff as well
 

ShadowNate

Member
I was not an original backer, but became one soon after the campaing on Kickstarter finished.
I refunded one year post their missed original deadline + slack time, so in 2016, fed up with their nonsense.

They put emphasis on marketing pure and simple. Development was a second priority.
They increased the scope to "yes to everything" and "here's an essay of how this system will work" with zero infrastructure in place, and to this day they have failed to deliver anything close to what was promised.
This is not mere incompetence or mismanagement. It is shady practices on top of that, and driving that, so yes, I do think it has been a scam.

The increased scope was justified by taking a forum poll. For fuck's sake, a forum poll. And people bought it. Not only that, but the same people who think that a forum poll can decide such a major design shift, a fucking forum poll that is not representative even of the members attending the forum, those same people will tell you that they understand how difficult game development is more than you do. Based on zero evidence. Or maybe they watched CIG's laughable youtube series on their progress.

They proceeded to change their TOS (especially the clause about refunds, sell virtual land, make referral contests, miss deadline after deadline for years, and as of late, miss the SQ42 beta deadline (they were nowhere near a beta in 2020) and post a roadmap update for a roadmap, walk back on written promises / design goals, organize annual conventions on a game that does not exist and promising more stuff that have yet to make it into the project, postponed indefinitely, scrapped. Ah, they did implement a few features, yes. So bad that they named them zero-tier and then proceeded to forget all about them.

This project has had red flags since the very start, but yes, it was crowd funded so some good faith was put towards the creator and the team. These days, if you're a backer you've been had. It's that plain for me. You are not getting a finished game, you're not getting anything near what was promised.
 

Starfield

Member
I was not an original backer, but became one soon after the campaing on Kickstarter finished.
I refunded one year post their missed original deadline + slack time, so in 2016, fed up with their nonsense.

They put emphasis on marketing pure and simple. Development was a second priority.
They increased the scope to "yes to everything" and "here's an essay of how this system will work" with zero infrastructure in place, and to this day they have failed to deliver anything close to what was promised.
This is not mere incompetence or mismanagement. It is shady practices on top of that, and driving that, so yes, I do think it has been a scam.

The increased scope was justified by taking a forum poll. For fuck's sake, a forum poll. And people bought it. Not only that, but the same people who think that a forum poll can decide such a major design shift, a fucking forum poll that is not representative even of the members attending the forum, those same people will tell you that they understand how difficult game development is more than you do. Based on zero evidence. Or maybe they watched CIG's laughable youtube series on their progress.

They proceeded to change their TOS (especially the clause about refunds, sell virtual land, make referral contests, miss deadline after deadline for years, and as of late, miss the SQ42 beta deadline (they were nowhere near a beta in 2020) and post a roadmap update for a roadmap, walk back on written promises / design goals, organize annual conventions on a game that does not exist and promising more stuff that have yet to make it into the project, postponed indefinitely, scrapped. Ah, they did implement a few features, yes. So bad that they named them zero-tier and then proceeded to forget all about them.

This project has had red flags since the very start, but yes, it was crowd funded so some good faith was put towards the creator and the team. These days, if you're a backer you've been had. It's that plain for me. You are not getting a finished game, you're not getting anything near what was promised.
See you when the game releases!
 
Rather amused by just finding out that I've been banned from the twitch channel can't remember when I even watched the star citizen twitch stream lmao
 
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Spacefish

Member
I don't understand why space sims are still a dead genre, the success of this botched production and elite dangerous show there's enough demand, the standard space combat games don't even seem that expensive to develop compared to other AAA games.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
I agree, I've been following this since its first reveal and i have this admit it's constantly off in the distance with each new big thing promising the world but never does.

Hey it doesn't bother me one bit what grown ass adults fling their money on but to call it a scam is a bit much when you can clearly see where the money is going and where's it's being spent, this dude is a fucking dreamer and is trying to build the ultimate space world to live inside of and technically it's a fucking dozey of a problem to figure out especially with his constant feature creep

Surely by now there should be a red line in the sand with no additional features to be added or is it simply a case of what's actually there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to keep players engaged for long and everytime they try to add these additional gameplay prolonging features they either break current systems or find out more stuff is needed to get it to work, sounds to me they're in a catch 22 situation and can't figure out how to get out of it.

Anyways I for one hope it works out and they create the game that's been in Roberts head all this time cause it looks fucking incredible
Here is the problem. It is two-fold

1. The game is its own worst enemy. Hideous management of the development and 'feature creep' have dragged it to hell in the everyday public's eyes. It has been in development for too goddamn long. No one cares. It is just a meme now to poke fun at and use as an example of how to kill potential before it is even realized.

2. This game will never NEVER live up to the time investment the development commanded, and hype the general public is going to give it if it ever nears release. You thought Cyberpunk 2077 was bad, yeesh. If Chris is getting red-ass at the mere thought of people thinking that there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to stay entralled and his only response is
Kylo Ren GIF by swerk

there is a problem. When this game releases no one will care, and the pilgrims that threw, literally thousands of dollars at the game, will be on the sidewalks like Las-Vegas-Smut-Peddlers flicking their cards just saying, "try it out. Give it a chance." All are welcome. /smh
 
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I don't understand why space sims are still a dead genre, the success of this botched production and elite dangerous show there's enough demand, the standard space combat games don't even seem that expensive to develop compared to other AAA games.
i would definitely play a modern AAA space sim, even one of lesser quality. i miss them, just not sure this is one i'd spend time with (really dislike the pay-to-play and production process).
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
Here is the problem. It is two-fold

1. The game is its own worst enemy. Hideous management of the development and 'feature creep' have dragged it to hell in the everyday public's eyes. It has been in development for too goddamn long. No one cares. It is just a meme now to poke fun at and use as an example of how to kill potential before it is even realized.

2. This game will never NEVER live up to the time investment the development commanded, and hype the general public is going to give it if it ever nears release. You thought Cyberpunk 2077 was bad, yeesh. If Chris is getting red-ass at the mere thought of people thinking that there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to stay entralled and his only response is
Kylo Ren GIF by swerk

there is a problem. When this game releases no one will care, and the pilgrims that threw, literally thousands of dollars at the game, will be on the sidewalks like Las-Vegas-Smut-Peddlers flicking their cards just saying, "try it out. Give it a chance." All are welcome. /smh

The only game that gets a proper release is Squadron 42. Star Citizen won't get it since it's already released. They are just going to build the universe while we can play at the same time.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
The only game that gets a proper release is Squadron 42. Star Citizen won't get it since it's already released. They are just going to build the universe while we can play at the same time.
Released eh, yea man keep flicking that card at an uncaring public. Keep throwing that pledge money at em.

EOPvZIf.jpg
 

Sentenza

Member
You thought Cyberpunk 2077 was bad, yeesh. If Chris is getting red-ass at the mere thought of people thinking that there isn't enough of a gameplay loop to stay entralled and his only response is
Yeah, no.
This is something I can already dismiss.
Even in its current, botched state, Star Citizen is far more closer to offer me something somewhat playable than what I can get out of my copy of CP2077, which I find utterly unplayable and absolutely impossible to enjoy in its current state.

I know there are a bunch of wankers who go around claiming that if you ignore the "old gen versions" CP2077 isn't that bad on PC. I think they are completely delusional.
 
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iQuasarLV

Member
Yeah, no.
This is something I can already dismiss.
Even in its current, botched state, Star Citizen is far more closer to offer me something somewhat playable than what I can get out of my copy of CP2077, which I find utterly unplayable and absolutely impossible to enjoy in its current state.

I know there are a bunch of wankers who go around claiming that if you ignore the "old gen versions" CP2077 isn't that bad on PC. I think they are completely delusional.
Own it. Finished it twice. Crashed once on release week. That is with the PC version on launch day running a Radeon rx470 4GB. No power user here. I will stand by my statement when Star Citizen actually wakes the fuck up and releases.

For all its faults, at least CDPR put out a goddamn game to the public. That is more than that shall remain unnamed entity of unknown origins.
 

Sentenza

Member
Own it. Finished it twice. Crashed once on release week.
I genuinely don't give a shit of how much you crashed.
I find it utterly unlikeable from a mechanical standpoint.

Controls are shit, combat is shit, looting and itemization are rotten shit, etc.
The only redeeming qualities of Cyberpunk is that close up dialogues with major NPCs look neat... If lacking in actual options.

I have tons of complaints to make about SC as well, but at least I could go into investing few hours in it with some friends and have a good time... Which I didn't with CP2077.
 
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iQuasarLV

Member
I genuinely don't give a shit of how much you crashed.
I find it utterly unlikeable from a mechanical standpoint.

Controls are shit, combat is shit, looting and itemization are rotten shit, etc.
The only redeeming qualities of Cyberpunk is that close up dialogues with major NPCs look neat... If lacking in actual options.

I have tons of complaints to make about SC as well, but at least I could go into investing few hours in it with some friends and have a good time... Which I didn't with CP2077.
Well keep your words on point then neighbor.

unplayable and absolutely impossible to enjoy in its current state.

That is real fucking far cry from you just hate that style of game offering. It won't change its fundamentals, and no matter how much you rail at it being unplayable. It quite certainly is. Even by console owners in its 1.2 state.

Again I'll take a little quip from the general public and media outlets about unrealized releases compared to actual releases.
TechCrunch commented "One may very well question the sanity of such a valuation for a company that has not yet shipped an actual product".
 
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Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
Released eh, yea man keep flicking that card at an uncaring public. Keep throwing that pledge money at em.

EOPvZIf.jpg

Since this is an MMO, it makes no sense to do a "release" when it has been playable for years. They just go from Alpha to Beta when the foundation is complete, but everything continues so no release just build forward and play. What is the definition of a "release"? All these early access games just change status but nothing changes on the game side.

So what is different from what I am saying? And yes, I have a few thousand in this project, what does it matter for someone else, it’s not your money. It's not just a game but one of the best gaming communities. I've met a lot of great gamers, content creators and devs. I'm a content creator for Star Citizen myself.
 
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