Oh dear, Charlie Hall is taking a break from telling readers about how Star Citizen is leap-frogging Elite and actually describing his player experience with 3.0. It actually makes for good reading in places, though the deferential interjections seem tonally incongruent.
‘This is, you know, a more full version of the AI system we call subsumption,’ says Chris showing people sitting on bunk beds.
Then they bullshit for a minute that the AI doesn’t always do the exact same actions.
‘our first example of our sort of fluid conversation system’
‘you sort of see the subtlety’
‘Just a reminder this is a life capture off of of… we’re not faking anything, you know. Just because we were gonna pre-record this doesn’t mean we were gonna fake of fix time step or… uhherr… do anything that you wound ne- normally do in a game capture just to kind of make everything look perfect’
And how the fuck did I miss the protagonist having a hiccup every time he gets a weapon
Holy shit The scene at the hangar when the prisoners arrive.
Chris: ‘And here we just…’ ALL PEOPLE ON DECK DESPAWN AND SPAWN IN DIFFERENT PLACES ‘…we know what’s happening, so…uhh’
Subtlety, motherfuckers!
This is happening during carrier take-off, a thing present in crobbler’s games since WC1
‘you saw some gingering on the landing gear because it’s all physicalised and there’s sort of… there’s conflict between the animation and the actual physics simulation… which is all stuff we’ll dial in and it won’t be there in the final run, but it’s still early stages’
When Chris dials in the subtleties the won’t be there either.
‘That’s a combination of a couple of NPC faces plus one of our HR… our HR directors’ geometry.’
They proceed to compliment the actress whose name they can’t remember.
How many H.R. Directors do they have?
Chris promises Batman-style scanning later on.
Remember some people posted a blurry monkey enemy pilot shot here during the stream? It’s even better in motion.
Virtual Captain
‘the whole story is fluidly *** from your point of view and again, no loading screens, no canned animation while you go to the next level’ they say as they switch form the third-person camera to the first-person view of a clearly different take
it reminds me of the directors commentary that you could activate in half-life 2, and how they explained the neat tricks and psychological methods they used to ensure that the player always looked in the right direction when something cool happened
this is the complete opposite
I hope B’Tak reads the thread. Because I’m coming for you.
Are you happy with your land protected by UUEEC ? Do you like their fast response ? I’ll just come crash a ship from orbit and make your 16x16 a crater.
Or maybe you were just mining that time, I’ll just come at you yelling “train to zone train to zone” EQ style, with a horde of pirates NPC ready to aggro anyone.
Or I’ll just fit my firefly with cloak and vanish when you are in their aggro range.
When you are dead and after your third crash you’ll finally be able to get out of your bed, I’ll be behind the door.
I’ll follow you and be ahead of you when you command your new ship.
I’ll be in the pilot seat when you enter your submarine, and 10 seconds later we will both be crashed into the starport, making you a criminal having to serve your time.
When you get out of jail and want to mix yourself a relaxing drink, you’ll only discover that the lemon juice was my piss.
When you crawl to the toilet to puke, but it will have overflown because the guy you hired to clean it was me.
Put your pvp slider to 0 and I’ll still be here for you B’Tak. Come into the space B’Tak.
G0RF
If only CIG’s Community Management team had thought of this before. I guess the Intern That Reads This Thread didn’t pass those tips along two years ago for some reason.
I don’t get it, Intern… You read it. Lots of your coworkers did, too — I heard back from some. They, too, were horrified at how terrible your community could be and how poorly your team handled Community Management. So what happened?
G0RF
If you think your biggest enemies are trolls or goons, or your biggest problems are making sure you delete any incriminating evidence you left behind on some old video archive your backers paid for, you really aren’t paying close enough attention.
Your biggest enemies– particularly right now– are the toxic zealots who have already backed your game and, in absence of a game to play, have decided to role play as Riot Cops beating down anybody who looks askew at their beloved (fictive) super-game. This pattern repeats daily in more places than any of us can count. On Twitter, Youtube comments, Facebook pages, Gaming Media article comments, Reddit, and elsewhere.
Where did they learn and perfect this odious art, you wonder? Why, the RSI forums, of course!
THE PROBLEM, IN SUMMARY:
You have stated your intention to “take the pressure off backers to keep funding the game” by focusing your efforts on winning newer backers to the cause. This is a sensible strategy, at least on its surface, yet the proposition is going to be bloody difficult if:
1) The game is buggy, confusing, and unfun to play.
2) The tutorial is broken.
3) The community is hostile to new players who state that either or both of the above is true.
THE SOLUTION, IN SUMMARY:
You, the Community and Marketing Team, do not have the power to fix what is wrong with the game, or accelerate the development of its improvement. You do, however, have useful tools to combat this problem. There are good-hearted, patient members in your community, trying their level best to help win new converts to the fold. And not all of them are motivated by your cynical referral program carrot.
You are fortunate in that respect. They still love you, for reasons beyond our understanding.
Because of that, you need to:
1) EMPOWER AND ELEVATE THE GOOD GUYS –- they are the best tools in your arsenal in what will be a difficult new season of your life. Elevate their stature, and start taking a harder line approach with that part of your backer base that truly is the enemy within. If the game was not the mess that it is, then this particular issue would not be of such urgent priority. You, the Community and Marketing leadership, may have no power over the pace and quality of development, but you have a lot of tools at your disposal for changing the discourse in your own community.
2) PRIORITIZE NEW PLAYER EDUCATION VIDEOS – Instead of doing yet another weekly show (the newest of which is apparently about Space Plants), you should focus on weekly programming aimed at educating non-players about the game and educating current players about the importance of welcoming any and all questions that non-players may have. Right now, some members of your own community are doing this for you, because they recognize the need is great, but it’s YOUR GAME, and you need to do this for yourself.
3) FIX THE DAMN TUTORIAL - Tell Chris that fixing the Tutorial is a five-alarm fire and needs developer attention immediately. Pull five guys off their 4th revamp of a spinning space chair remodel and have them make a tutorial that doesn’t suck.
4) DON’T JUST DISCOURAGE TOXIC BACKERS, PUNISH THEM – Lando and Ben showed some encouraging signs in a recent Reverse the Verse, asking the community not to insult or argue with people. But an offhand comment in a show seen by maybe 1000 viewers is not enough. You need to make examples of the toxic losers who stand amongst the Welcome Committees with their guns out, ready to fire endless lobs of “You’re an idiot”, “You don’t understand Game development”, “This is an ALPHA, asshole!” at your next potential wave of customers. You have seen it play out countless times, as surely as we have. You need to start doing something about it.
5) REFRESH YOUR PUBLIC PERSONA BY ELEVATING NEW FACES - Ben and Sandi, I’m sorry to break the news to you, but each of you have lost credibility with the fanbase over the last year, for very different reasons. The rapturous reception of Sean Tracy by “Reverse the Verse” viewers is telling you something– that a straight-talking and informed developer actually talking about the true state of the game is like manna from heaven to a starving people wandering the desert looking for the Promised Land. You could regain some goodwill with an increasingly restive population by replacing yourselves with Sean Tracy and Cherie Heiberg. Ben, you come across as Uninformed and Sandi, you come across as Disinterested. Sean and Cherie are very informed, very interested and, in contrast to you both, they seem trustworthy, too. If you want to change the tone (and you bloody well should), it starts with replacing them mouthpieces.
I recognize that this is constructive criticism, and will likely be seen as presumptuous and disingenuous, considering that it came from Something Awful. You seem far more likely to take action to our posts when you find us delighting in some smoking gun you’ve left buried somewhere that you need to track down and throw into the ocean.
Yet it is offered sincerely, and the advice is sound. Do not let ‘director of spaceships’ titles earned through sycophancy deafen you, Ben. Do not let your excessive self-regard as a Marketing Genius blind you, Sandi. Let neither your cash reserves nor past successes delude you about the present realities. There’s a chill in the air now, guys, and it’s not just the weather changing, it is the season.
1) If Citizens of the Stars is your answer, Ima give you a C-. For effort. There are some nice guys out there for sure — Baron, Bored, Gheesling, and that streamer SuperNerdGuy or something (I can’t remember his exact handle but he’s GReAT and even handles trolls/goons like a champ) — but you need a programmatic approach. And by “programmatic” I don’t mean “you need to put them in your silly YouTube programming.”
2) A big fat “F”, as in Fat. You’ve put out over 100 videos in that time and hardly a one of them does that which is most critical, seeing as as how your Marketing Leadership spoke of “taking the pressure of current backers” and getting new ones in.
3)
4) Another “F”. Well, I guess given the toxicity of your Orwellian moderation staff, this was kind of a big ask. But the stupidity of driving out even mild critics and curbstomping dissent over the years while nodding approvingly as toxic acolytes like AgentMothman and StupidQuestionBot took the same fight to reddit has turned those you could’ve easily won back into yet more exiles and enemies who are more than happy to spread motivated dissent elsewhere, anywhere. Congrats on the Balkanization and I hope you’re enjoying seeing the subject of your game always, always, ALWAYS provoke angry endless debates anywhere and everywhere.
5) How about a D, as in “Dammit you blew this, too.” Well, you finally sidelined the world’s biggest Chris Roberts fanboy, then you replaced him with another turbo-suck-up. I guess neckbeard cultivation is a demographic strategy or something? Replacing Ben with Lando was nearly zero sum, but it hardly matters when you’ve left the person least interested in your game, gaming in general, or even work in general actually sitting in the co-host seat the whole time. Even a lot of your core backers are sick of her, CIG. Sick of her disinterest, he spotlight hogging, her undisguised pursuit of an unsuccessful acting career, her Star Kitten Referral Program strokes of genius, her fake persona and feigned sincerity and all the rest that comes with her. She needs to be free to pursue her great passion full time, for she has so much more to give that will end up on figurative cutting room floors. She has long proven prodigious at this, so why not tap into the wisdom of a dozen unnamed editors out there and put her on your cutting room floor by now?
I don’t even know who to suggest as replacements since Sean is going on NewEgg shows parroting Chris’s malarkey about how huge the game is. He’s still beloved though, trusted and has a friendly “authentic” personality that comes across well on screen. And you need seemingly authentic personalities as your public faces. Lando feels fake and glib and dear lord people have had more than their fill of that by now!
Cherie is great yet you plopped her on your worst show of all and have her stuck reading Lore most of the time. See how much happier and more natural people are when they’re interacting with other and not stuck reading theorycrafted fictions that would take a century to actually get in game?
She knows the game far better than the VP of Marketing and is 1000x more natural and warm, and I’d still suggest she’s got exactly the kind of “adorkable” persona that is so battletested and reliable in video game promotion that it is seen as obligatory everywhere else, save for the fact that your backer base has enough creeps and windowlickers in it that maybe she’d be safer hidden from view completely. (But whether you elevate her or someone like her, you need to retire the Terminatrix.)
Yet still, if she had even the slight willingness to take on the role, you’d win a LOT of goodwill because she is adored for her goofy fun smart personality. Look at the gentler YouTube comments and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
“Maybe she didn’t win the competition, but she won my heart.”
“I’m a simple man, I see cherie’s name, i click on the video. That woman is amazing.”
“Cherie has such a sweet smile….. ”
“only clicked on this for Cherie.”
“(everybody skipping to the Cherie part XD)”
“1.) I’ll totally admit I watched this 99% for Cherie. She’s ridiculously cute, in every way. I’ve never had such a dev crush in my life.”
“Ah, mon Cherie!”
“cant wait cherie is always great to watch always soo cheerful lol”
“The Jeremiah bit at the very end was great. And I love that the whole community team is in on this stuff…and who doesn’t love Cherie? Great episode.”
The market is telling you something. Loudly. Repeatedly. Plainly.
“Are you there, CIG? It’s me, Market.”
LISTEN to it for a change.
Whoever you get, you need new faces, stat. This is so obvious and you actually could rejuvenate an exhausted formula by cycling out the faker brigade Sandi leads and putting in some actual male and female human beings who love gaming in general and YOUR game in particular.
All of this sound, obvious advice is sure to be ignored yet again in the relentless repetition of the self-interested and self-defeating. So I look forward to more, and worse, for as long as possible. Keep doing what you’re doing!
G0RF
Beer4theBeerGod
G0RF I love you buddy but we both know CIG has a better chance of releasing Star Citizen with critical acclaim than ever listening to a soul about how they act in public.
GORF:
“But I thought if I Effortposted enough I could effect positive change!”
BEER:
“Who taught you how to do that?! WHO?!”
GORF:
“I learned it from YOU, Beer!!”
(Tears, muffled whispering)
“I learned it from you…”
Freeze frame. Slow zoom to Beer.
V.O.
“Heretics who write effort posts… inspires skeptics who write effortposts.”
Scruffpuff
Pac-Man designed by Chris Roberts wouldn’t have pellets, a maze, or ghosts, just a disc janking randomly around a black screen. Oh, and the pixel would be blue.
