If this wasn't coming from a nearly half billion dollar squandering piece of vaporware that's enriching a family of grifters, I could see this as a brilliant teaser for a space sci fi Lovecraftian horror game.
Got called a “hater” and a “Luddite” when I made a joke about the game being in beta while doing shit with the org I was in, and a bunch of my org mates (who have spent $$$$) started to get super salty because “RDR2 and GTA V took a gajillion years to make and they turned out great” and “you just don’t know how the game development process works”
Meanwhile we were having to reload the game constantly due to 30k’s, falling through surfaces, and random bugs.
Yeah, pre-release games have heaps of weird bugs.
Most of them aren't because you decided to use the most difficult (arguably impossible) and complicated way of making a multiplayer server backend for no reason, meaning your game can't have too many doors open or the spaceship AI will break system-wide.
your game can’t have too many doors open or the spaceship AI will break system-wide.
How does that even happen?
Because, very roughly, the one server is handling every action that happens and every object that spawns at once, and as the server ages those things build up in memory because they're being actively managed (until quite recently they'd be loaded as objects even if no one was anywhere near them) and clog the server, meaning that after a few hours AI and other cycles like trade begin to bug out and switch off as the server tries not to crash.
This is supposed to be solved by "Server meshing" which in fairyland will allow thousands of players to dynamically play together as multiple servers shift the loads. As of last year they were still trying to get two servers to connect to each other. They've been trying to do this for about 5 years now
Server meshing is possible because thats how eve online has operated. The star system is divided up by a bunch of servers so hopping from one area to another effectively disconnects you from one and connects to another when going through the space gates.
However eve online only manages to achieve large player numbers on a single server cos the game itself is super simplistic and operates at a tick rate of 1 (lul) and even then it struggles to handle large numbers of player is single zones during big fights.
Star citizen trying to do the same thing with i assume 64 ticks and much more complex interactions with the game world is most likely impossible.
Why do multiplayer servers still suck shit when handling more than like 100 players at a time? What's the bottleneck exactly? The network?
Cost mostly. Its a constant struggle between balancing performance and cost of running the servers. As we all know companies dont like cost only profit which is why any game that uses dedicated servers should allow community run servers.
Also the server needs to distribute each players interaction with all other players.
And handling serverside logic over clientside to prevent hacking.
Many things but mostly just cost. Having worked briefly even in simple games the servers are always more underpowered than they should be even for crappy games i made where it was just single users interacting with the server.
What's the biggest cost though? The bandwidth or the actual CPU calculations that need to be done server-side?
Cpu and ram. Bandwidth comes pretty cheap and games dont need much.
Modern game servers will do lots of validation to see if the client is doing something "legal" before shipping that out to others. Lots of processing work needs to happen for every tick in the simulation which means the more players you have the more validation and processing per simulation cycle. Then there's various lag compensation and other faff.
Bandwidth wise though not much data is being sent at any one time. Most data centers can handle massive file transfers whereas games use very little data in comparison.
Also limitation in the possibilities of netcode itself. Networking for games is hard. And the limitation of physical distance and speed packets can transmit over a network.
Some problems can never really be solved.
Planetside 2 could handle hundreds of players. Idk why no one else has tried it. That was back in 2013.
probably exponential complexity when they start interacting with each other
eve has built in server lag as a feature, super cool but hilarious at the same time
Its pretty clever as well. The entire game is built around the feasibility of players all over the globe being able to connect to a single server cluster. But unlike star citizen i imagine they actually thought about the architecture first instead of running on a kickstarter pipe dream like sc.
We're probably both familiar with treats havers that can't handle criticism of their treats. Happens on Hexbear too. This is next level treat defense, though. The treat is in vapor form, barely there at all and nothing like it was promised, but there's that treat defense anyway.
what is it with games like Star Citizen and Cyberpunk 2077 failing at basic shit that games from like 2000 could do, like spawning pedestrians and vehicles in the right place. Must be capitalism rotting from the inside.
in the case of Cyberpunk, it was an issue with being way too ambitious for the development time that they had - they were trying to make a GTA-style open world game, except the studio had no prior experience with that (Witcher 3 was open world, but the urban setting here makes things a lot more complicated), they restarted development at some point, they were throwing a ton of shit in (cars! owning and decorating your own apartments!), and as a result the game just wasn't ready when the execs decided to push it out
Star Citizen on the other hand is mostly a grift, but it also has a similar thing going on, with the scope being expanded further and further despite there not even being a proper, stable base to build on, leading to jank like this
And the thing is a lot of the linear sequences of the game was pretty good, the game should've been just like that from the start. Perhaps with some sort of hub system.
But in that reality people would likely complain about how the game is "limited" instead and ask for the game to be open world.
Yeah, this whole drive towards open worlds is one of the trends in modern gaming I really don't like. I'd take an immersive sim with a bunch of smaller, but rich in interesting content levels over a massive bloated open world any day. The Prague exploration in Deux Ex: Mankind Divided was far more interesting than any open-world game I've played (not that I've played that many, I don't really keep up with most modern games since my PC's pretty old), it took me like 3 hours to even get to the main quest.
Yea open world push has made a lot of great games kinda meh, even though Metro exodus was fun I much preferred the immersion you got in 2033 and last light being much more confined, and it felt like the plot flowed much more successfully.
You might be onto something about the capitalism rotting from the inside here in a more specific way. Both Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Citizen have put out bombastic and dishonest "vertical slices" to stoke the hype. One involved :awooga: boobah from an unconscious woman that EgoInsert McManPain gets to rescue carry around naked for a bit, camera focused on the :awooga: because nothing's sexier than unconscious and possibly dying naked women, and the other involved :awooga: implied booba from a beaten and tortured woman that EgoInsert McManPain gets to "rescue" and carry around for a bit. With implications.
I humbly think that g*mers should not be allowed to feel pleasure
The more hype to go with the jank the more zeal in the defense of the jank too.
It's probably related to something Hbomberguy talks about in his recent Deus Ex video. Basically: it boils down to the fact that games in the 90s or 2000s had a lot less shit to manage, a lot less corporate oversight, and therefore a ton more flexibility. One of the interesting things about Deus Ex Human Revolution is that it actually fell prey to a number of miststeps and mistakes the developers talked about in their post mortem that the early builds of the first Deus Ex game did as well.
The thing is: with the first Deus Ex they had the flexbility to completely redesign huge parts of the game and completely reshift and redesign entire sequences. In Human revolution there are so many more moving components and corporate deadlines to meet that they couldn't get to the 11th hour and go "this all isn't working....let's rebuild all of it". From the way Warren Spector talks about it....Deus Ex didn't become what it was until right up to its final release.
I think Cyberpunk unfortunately fell into a similar trap. The Developer reached for the moon and tried to have Cyberpunk be absolutely everything....but by year 8 or something all these systems and plans just weren't integrating cohesively. So then they started ripping shit out trying to streamline and redesign shit into something that was at least semi stable aaaaaaaaaaand it broke a ton of shit in the process.
I mean, we've got Minecraft and Stardew Valley and a zillion isometrics like Disco Elysium that are both fun and pretty. And its not like prior generations haven't pushed out a few turds. Pretty much every MMO was a shit-show before World of Warcraft, simply because the system requirements for an always-on massive multiplayer game - both from the client and server side - exceeded the tech capacity of the era.
indies have always been great, and triple A studios have always been cash-grabbing corner-cutters, but it feels like the tripe As have gotten even worse and are incapable of things that were considered basic decades ago. The turd has gotten simultaneously stinkier, yet more polished.
I'm having fun with Elden Ring.
There are plenty of good games of ever variety. But there's also a lot of overhyped shit
hell, No Man's Sky had a complete turnaround from the joke it initially was and is now very fun to my dumb brain
I like nms as a relaxing game. After the first 2 hrs or so the survival is very low stakes.
Yeah, I found the opening of it really tense - like "wait what where do i go oh SHIT THIS ISN'T OXYGEN AND THE STORM IS RADIOACTIVE"
and then it becomes peaceful spore creature scanning simulator
And Elite Dangerous if you're into trucking simulators (if your truck traveled at multiples of the speed of light and was armed with 4 chainguns and heat seeking missiles)
I want to go around stomping Thargoids, but I just can't get past the learning curve of the game. Space sims really arent my jam. I like my space games arcade-y and full of pew pew pew lasers and explosions
Rebel Galaxy is pretty fun and straightforward in execution (also cheap especially when on sale), the sequel Rebel Galaxy Outlaw still needs some fixes though
Not easy to combine space travel with the concept of the dark ages but goddamn they pull it off
I hate NFTs with a focused passion, but even then I have to ask how often a Star Citizen "investment" gets back any returns better than a refund (or less on the grey market), compared to NFTs that can indeed turn a profit from either Greater Idiot Theory or, more often, a price pumping trade between chuds that then stokes Greater Idiot Theory.
Nearly, not quite there yet. But they're still making record revenues over this same time last year from hundreds or even thousands of dollars of new "pledges" from each credulous fan at a time, so at this rate, it will be half a billion pretty soon.
Are they still bring in new players? Can't imagine new players not scared away by its reputation and prices. Also can't image existing players paying even more to have very little delivered year after year. JPEG factory has halted production, yes?
Yep lots of big youtubers love occasionally dropping a highly cherry picked video to advertise the game. Pisses me off to no end cos not a single viewer will get that cherry picked experience.
I think they are, unfortunately.
A lot of the ongoing revenue, unless it's some kind of money laundering thing, seems to be sunk cost fallacy and fanboys (let's face it, it's like 99% aging men you see in the CitizenCon pics) further "pledging" to stick it to the critics and doubters.
Wait, wait. CitizenCon? There's a fucking convention devoted to ONE GAME? That doesn't even exist yet?
Yes.
When covid became a thing, though, they had a convenient reason to do even less for the rubes.
They used to do wild stuff like have their big spenders come to a steak dinner for thousands a pop. Photos of the event are hard to find now (I saw them on SomethingAwful's dedicated thread at the time), but it was the dumpiest, malest, oldest, whitest bunch you can imagine. Those people looked like they haven't played a video game since Freelancer, and judging by what they want, that's probably true.
Why didn't the usual outrage crowd goes after Space Citizen? Is it because the game is "apolitical" so it's okay for it to grift millions of dollars?
It's actually worse than that.
A ton of chuds see Star Citizen as the return of "real gaming" for vague self-conjured reasons, and it doesn't help that the setting and its lore are generally a mix of the worst of late 90s neoliberal techbro wankery (see "Roberts Space Industry" and its illustrious founder, Chris Roberts, which is directly the name of the head grifter of the grift, turning himself into a :melon-musk: style "innovator": https://starcitizen.tools/Chris_Roberts_(lore) ) and fascist power fantasy (see the setting being a "United Earth Empire" with a somehow elected "Imperator" in a kill or be killed war against the lazily named "Vanduul," and how people who serve in the military get to be, you guessed it, Star Citizens with exclusive privileges!).
I've seen with my own eyes vast walls of text that I'd rather not dig up now about how Star Citizen will somehow destroy SJWs and their agenda and bring nonpolitical real men games back. :jordan-eboy-peterson:
The loudest big spenders (Especially "Lethality" if you dare to look him up on the official forums) also have this "we are the last true hardcore G*mers which is why 10 minute walks to the spaceship are the only way to be real and epic like us" attitude.
Well then, critical support to crissy rob in separating g*mers from their money
A ton of chuds see Star Citizen as the return of “real gaming” for vague self-conjured reasons
Ironically more truth in this than anyone would care to admit. Vaporware has a long and storied legacy, even if Star Citizen is a high water mark in scams.
I'm old enough to remember the Horizons MMO, Duke Nukem Forever, the appropriately-named Phantom game console... You're not a Real Gamer unless you've been suckered by at least one of these.
I haven't heard anyone mention Horizons in a long time. :chomsky-yes-honey:
"Vanguard: Saga of Heroes" was an older version of the same "Hey Epic G*mers! Hate how GAMES THESE DAYS are? Come here to chase that dragon forever and ever!" grift. At least it actually came out, unlike "Pantheon" by the same "visionary innovator" grifter.
Why do people keep throwing money at this obvious boondoggle when Elite Dangerous AND No Man's Sky already exist and are both quite good?
No Man's Sky is a cute early tier deployment of procedural generation, but not what I would call "good" in terms of gameplay.
Elite Dangerous is Mechwarrior In Space and cool as hell and I love it.
But hell, Eve Online has been a thing for nearly two decades. Star Wars and Star Trek have had multiple online multiplayer games. Then there's Warframe and Skyforge and Planetside and Destiny. Just take your pick. They all actually exist and are varying degrees of a good time.
You don't need to keep pining for Duke Nukem Forever In Space.
He already got his ego stroked by his fellow grifter, Chris Roberts, when he ordered a flying version of the "Cybertruk" into Star Citizen. Yes, it's also a ripoff of a ship from Elite Dangerous, but the marketing steered it toward the bazingamobile reference because of the overlap of credulous rubes.
I agree that this is actually pretty creepy as someone who knows nothing about Star Citizen lol
If you like creepy, check out the once-sincere fanfiction worldbuilding for Star Citizen that was called "The Stimpire."
In the last 500 years, the Fourth Stimpire has dominated four systems, which it has united into one starzone, Stimsis. The Fourth Stimpire has origins from the Ten Empire War in which 10 of the United Stimpires revolted against each rules. All empires except for the fourth swore freedom upon their citizens. There is no free speech in the Fourth Stimpire, and all self-controlled transportation has been made illegal without undergoing painful medical verification methods, in which arteries are severed without pain resistant, operated entirely by machines. The way they work claim to be the most hygenic and healthy way possible, but these machines often rub against pain points, causing great deals of pain to patients. The heart is then extracted from the body and placed into a glass grinding machine. Various energy centers are also dissected and replaced with dangerous transplants. After the painful, 52 hour surgical procedure, patients will then have to use a fused guidance tool, which pumps painful resistors into the body every 2 hours. The pain they have caused is so bad, the victim would freeze in a tense position. They would then collapse afterwards.
Sexual stimulation in any way within the grounds of the Fourth Stimpire is strictly prohibited, and anyone detected even touching their sexual organs will be subjected to a penectomy or if the offender was a female, they would then have a razor inserted into their ovaries. They would pump a blue solution into the womb until the stitchings burst. Offenders would also be forced to show their operated areas in public, and they would always harass and punch them to a pulp, against their will.
Otherwise, offenders would be tazed with the worst type of electricity in the systematic district, causing so much pain, the victim would scream and flail in madness. The pain would also triple every second, but no death would be incurred. This is also used in combat against enemy units, which is why all UEE forces must wear the upgraded suit to block this effect.
However, enertainment is also questionable in UEE grounds. Sporting events end with the losing team being rounded into a grinder and shredded on live television, boxing matches end with the loser having their hands removed without anasthesia, flight races would end with the losers having their arms and legs removed, then being injected with insanity, for entertainment. People are also forced into these events, by undergoing a painful 127 hour procedure which involves tweaking the muscles so they will not listen to brain commands, and then having a painful drug injected which also causes madness if the player is not sporting. This is all for entertainment, and anyone not watching any of it during sporting times and cheering for the winning team, they will be imprisoned into galactic camps.
Snuff films are also broadcast, and actors are actually murdered just for entertainment. Stealth droids also guide these forced actors into behaving exactly as the director dreams, otherwise they will be punished by being placed into a macerator and having their execution written into the film. Any film that does not feature someone being murdered will be burned and the entire crew behind it will be executed in the most grotesque way possible - vivisection.
All executions are broadcast, and anyone who misses even a millisecond, even by blinking, will be executed. All citizens must boo to the person being executed, and the family is gathered to be injected with eternators, which cause pain forever, making them immoral but feeling the pain tenfold every millisecond. They cannot pass out, but they will feel like it forever.
Conquests by this Stimpire end in the planet being razed, and all the citizens being executed in the same way as their citizens are. The planet is then destroyed and all remnants of it are removed, and any memories of it will be erased instantly from civil minds. People who are also killed are also erased from memories, and all memories of them, including toys and pictures, are destroyed.
Prisoners undergo 40,000 years of relentless and endless labor, and anyone not complying is sentenced to the eternator injection. All prisoners injected with eternators are placed into capsules and launched into far space, then the room is closed tight to ensure maximum insanity. Some prisoners are also subjected to the removal of blood, the lungs, the liver, the genitals, the skeleton, the muscles, the eyes, and even the injection of pressure. Prisoners sentenced to pressure chambers are locked in until they are inflated to a high level. The decompression is then stopped to make sure they are inflated and uncomfortable.
Children born on the 14th of July are subjected to the removal of their skeleton and an implant of a silver liquid to replace it. The nervous sysem is also injected in various parts to ensure it is five times more sensitive than the average.
Restaurants also are ordered to serve civil meat, and anyone attending must give themself up to be cooked into a grotesque meal. They are cooked alive, undergoing extreme pain, and are then subjected to industrial grinders and blenders. The Stimpire orders at least 1 million citizens to be dispatched every day, as they are afraid the population may overthrow them. But only one planet is cared for, and the rest are banned from eating, drinking, talking, using technology, touching anyone, wearing unauthorized clothes, touching buildings, or walking a centimeter out of designated routes. Civil enforcers are on every planet, and they are engineered so that they are 40 times larger than the 300 quadrillion population. At least 7 billion die every 12 hours under this rule.
Thoughts are also surveyed, and anyone who does not think anything to loving the Sti mpire with more than their capabilities will be sentenced to a prison. Prisoners who are punished for this violation will meet their greatest fear, only to have it amplified so they will turn insane as they imagine it exactly as they fear it. They then undergo a painful extraction of all fluids, to be replaced by a toxin which causes permanent irritation. The unknown substance keeps the subject aging normally, except they will never die. Prisoners punished in this way are unable to be reverted, despite many efforts, and they will never be able to be disposed.
The sickening truths have been revealed only today, and invigilation teams are still investigating the truths without setting foot in the galactic space of this sickening empire?
The best contribution of SC was getting everyone hyped over deferred decals. Now almost everyone uses them. You can also thank that Alien game since it also used them and was actually released as a finished game.
Oh, if you're new to the Star Citizen saga, do I have a treat for you.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7SIP0NDfM2yyHKfRmCAociCcJKZHHY0E
um, im watching the first video and the animation is hilarious
The usual fanboy defense meme is that anyone with a bad frame rate just has a terribad (yes, they're old and stuck in their ways, they still say that sometimes) computer, presumably without SSD.
