Posted on February 16, 2018 | written by GOONRATHI
February Set 3
Posted on February 16, 2018 | written by GOONRATHI
February Set 3
Scruffpuff
TheAgent
each lot is around $85. I mean holy shit. holy fucking shit that’s almost $45,000 in housing. the estimated total spend for him on Shroud of the Avatar is something like $100,000 to $125,000 and he’s just now complaining about p2w mechanics, lol
the icing on this is his burning hatred of wow, a game which he never played and is about 21398103109283 billion times better than shroud in every single possible way
the dude was straight up hoping to make like $15k a month or so off his “investment” which of course won’t fucking happen because shroud is a completely fucked game from top to bottom
I think the burning hatred of WoW and all other games in that category you hear from SC or SOTA usually stems from people who hate the lack of the ability to pay for respect.
They deny it’s pay to win because they argue the housing etc. doesn’t give you in-game combat advantages. They don’t want time to win either because someone with more time than they have can get better than they are.
It’s literally their deepest need to have a permanent elite class that they paid to be a member of. Purchased esteem that can never be achieved by anyone else no matter how much time they spend.
I can’t imagine what these people’s lives are like.
People aren’t paying for what SC is, they’re paying for what they hope it will be, and when it fails to deliver (which, with all the hype how could it even possibly meet people’s expectations) a lot of people are going to be crushed.
Idk just seems wrong to me.
Yeah it’s not even that there’s shit tons of over promising and scope creep, you nailed it with your “not what it is, but what they hope” but the really shitty part is combining that “all my hopes and dreams in a unified vidyagame” it’s that Chgris Crobberts and his skeezy wife took all those things, added nostalgia and Chris’ reputation from the 80s/90s, AND (the worst part) combining that with using literally every single sleazy marketing 101 trick in the book. Like the chapter in the marketing 101 book titled “Don’t do this because it’s bad but if you’re a shitbag used car dealer then read this chapter I guess.”
Time limited sales. Number limited sales. Special treatment for people that have spent big money. Special in game locations for people that spent big money. Special sales for people that have already spent big money. An upgrade system that takes a masters in accounting for people to decipher. Sales where you only get the sale price if you’re using NEW money and not just upgrading.
And it results in the SC Faithful revering Sandi as a marketing genius since she’s the person that raised 170 million dollars for their dreams. It definitely isn’t nostalgia and obsessive-compulsive disorder and sleazy marketing 101. It’s because Sandi is a marketing wunderkind.
G0RF
It’s honesty been a while since Erin, Sandi or Archer (!) have really been in the hot seat. Feels like Papy’s been made the heat sink for backer dreams this season in his new role. Poor bastard. Oh and Lando, too — laying it on thicker than ever, convincing no one, and leaving many of us nostalgic for the earnestness of the trueblood fanboy Lesnick.
Nobody here thinks Sandi does the Marketing nor have they for ages — she shows up for ATV, occasionally twitters, pursues the next cutting room floor gig with that indomitable drive of hers, drives away Marketing subordinates quarterly, and hits a stage twice a year to tearfully giggle before a crowd as if each new appearance was her accepting a lifetime achievement award for humanitarian work rather than being a big awkward reminder she’s still making fat bank for reading scripts about marginal progress underway for a game she cares not a whit about.
As for Erin and Chris, they both seem to be shrinking and retreating. Chris has pivoted back to Squadron oversight again so that should pretty much kill its hope of release in the next couple of years. Erin was supposed to be a confidence builder for the backers but at this point his machine gun stammer and worrying health signs just seem to heighten anxieties. He may be better off letting the Dukes of High Chill, Papy and Chambers, do the talking. Neither look like they’re about to grab their chest and start gasping — which is optically a more helpful look.
I don’t know how it looks from where you stand but it sure feels to me like 2017 was the year that the expansionist vision of Star Citizen surrendered to contraction and resignation, even though neither CIG nor backers are openly speaking of it. Capitulation is felt and seen everywhere even though old habits die hard and routines run habitually. It’s depressingly thin gruel for comedy sometimes but we do what we can.
CONSIDER THE LIVESTREAMERS
You can really see it on the regular fan livestreams. Redacted, Relay, the Captain’s Table, the Space Bro Show. Nobody is playing the release they spent a year and a half hyped to max about.
It’s widely agreed that 3.01 is unplayable. If it’s not the framerates, it’s the interdictions. If not the interdictions, the broken missions. So everybody’s jamming on Tarkov, Fortnite, Monster Hunter or something, anything else but Star Citizen during their daily streams and when they get together for their weekly discussions with other streamers, they theorycraft about 3.2, 4.0, “what I will do when (x) is in the game”, or they grouse politely about CIG’s gaffes of the last week. The old routines run out of duty, habit, compulsion — even though they rely on an assumption nobody really seems to believe anymore:
“The game will one day be fixed, fun and make possible all of these theorycrafted possibilities for gameplay I’ve been clinging to for years and do so better than all games that came before it.”
(Just listen to Erris on this week’s Relay craptalking about Bethesda’s supposedly terrible lockpicking mechanics and you’ll see him employ this when theorycrafting CIG’s better [but as yet totally undefined] way of implementing hacking in the game…)
The routines die hard, but even the longtime loyalists are exhausted, losing faith, watching the last dimly glowing embers of what was once white hot hope slowly crumble off as ash. Even if stability and performance weren’t such a brutal tax, the meager loops and frustratingly implemented play mechanics in the game are a drag as designed — a fact that guys like Luke Pressley at Foundry openly admit. There’s a huge burden to fix not just what is broken to make what isn’t broken Fun. In year 6.
Erris’s desperate pleading that “We need Chris, too” because “Chris gives me faith” a couple of weeks ago was a miserable damn sight; a dreamoholic with cirrhosis of the brain begging for a shot of the hair of the dog that bit him. Chris’s confidence helps Erris run the magic routine. But Chris is retreating, closing up, slipping away and he might as well, he may be symbolic source of hope for the dreamer collective but he’s the practical source of the project malaise just as Lucas was for the prequels.
Batgirl watched CIG revoke her backstage VIP pass right after they maximized the chance to squeeze it for a little extra CitizenCon 2017 hype — cold-blooded, considering how loyal she’s been and for how long. Now she’s venturing into constructive criticism.
Dan Gheesling said his pained goodbyes after explaining 3.0 didn’t have enough to keep either him or his viewers engaged.
BadNewsBaron wrote an essay of defense of Star Citizen on Medium.com a little while back, but he too has moved on quietly to new games.
**Twerk probably didn’t realize the irony last week when he openly bemoaned that the bigger ships made for terrible FPS levels and it really needed fixing — he was only just now seeing problems that Heretic Beer4theBeerGod had written extensive warnings about three years ago. Good thing CIG drove out such voices and left the community a safe space for asskissers and theorycrafters — they’ll have only each other to feed on as they get exactly what they asked for all along, Chris Roberts’s unalloyed vision of the Best Damn Space Sim Ever.**
The malaise is everywhere — the sense that things have gone horribly wrong is widely felt though not widely acknowledged. It’s the subtext of nearly all discussions about the game between fans and streamers and even from CIG themselves yet never the text save for places like here, or Frontier forums, Derek’s blogs, the refunds subreddit, MassivelyOP or other little heretical outposts here and there. (There’s another very interesting one but I’ll write about that later.)
If the thread feels like a broken record, MoMA well, it’s in part because malaise has been the story here for years.
CIG really seems to be shrinking before our eyes and putting greater distance between leadership and the public than in the dumb ol’ days. Most of the energy and enthusiasm these days has shifted to arguing about the Crytek lawsuit because at least that has a wide range of possible outcomes and will make winners and losers of those playing prediction games. That game has no designer, it’s been improvised on the fly by critics and fans serving their time-honored roles on a new battlefield, yet even that game is a better game than Chris has managed to put out after $180 Million and six years of effort. Seems like that says quite a lot, little of it good.
I still enjoy your participation in the thread, MoMA. How you spend your money is your business and if you want to use big $0.25 words in effort posts I’m hardly one to throw stones. You do you, even if you like to rock the maybe more than you should and the not enough.
IS A CITIZEN NOT ENTITLED TO THE JPEGS HE PURCHASED?
No, says Chris Roberts. That was a pledge, and no refunds. Game delivered.
Roberts’ team at CIG and RSI has become a target of abuse and harassment these past few years, because their game projects are not yet finished. This is despite their being supported by the single most heavily-funded crowdfunding campaign of any kind, on any platform, for any thing.
Virtual Captain
“Since we are making Star Citizen with funds from our backers, we don’t feel we can currently use those funds for anything other than developing the game,” CIG said.
G0RF
at Charlie Hall LARPing as investigative reporter.
Clackity-clack-clack DING!
“Is CIG AOK with the BBB — our team investigates because we’re keeping them honest!”
Clackity-clack-clack DING!
Get real, man. You’re a stenographer sitting between two PR flacks crafting a mutually negotiated press release meant to turn controversy to nontroversy. As usual.
Sarsapariller
“HA!” I say, pounding the desk so hard that my keyboard launches into orbit harder than Elon Musk’s last ride. “BBB says that Star Citizen is an A+ safety rating! Take that, Derek Smart.” I grin and lean back in the security of my ten thousand dollar homemade sim pit, built specifically to play a game that doesn’t exist. “How can you possibly come back against an ironclad endorsement like that?” I gesticulate wildly, knocking over the statue of the RSI Constellation MK IV, a cheap chinese piece-of-shit model of a ship that cost me one hundred real American dollars and represents an art asset that was refactored so many times that it no longer bears any resemblance to the thing I received, that I cannot even use in game, because the game doesn’t exist. “Wait until I tell all the guys on discord about this gaffe! We’re gonna bury Chris in money.” I pull my Star Citizen t-shirt over my Squadron 42 t-shirt, which I embarrassingly had embroidered with “Answer the call- 2014” and knock aside my Star Citizen joystick, a rebranded Thrustmaster that Chris announced one year in a dream frenzy, endorsed by no less than POLYGON even, before quietly selling the sole demo unit on ebay- good thing I’d been there to snipe it before some unbeliever could! Spittle flying from my unshaven face as I really lean over my now rapidly discoloring Star Citizen mousepad, really getting into my rant, I continue. “Damn goons have been trying to say this game can’t deliver and is basically just selling us garbage but I think the Better Business Bureau knows a thing or two about selling garbage!” I hold my hand up to shield my Javelin poster from the deluge- it is one of a kind, a real-life representation of the $2,500 dollar spaceship that bought but cannot actually fly because the game doesn’t function and the ship itself will never, ever be released; This precious real-life version of the sales brochure jpg is likely the only contact I will ever have with an item that cost me as much as a used car. “Star Citizen can only get better from here, you fucking FUD spreaders!” I shout, now apoplectic with rage, so swollen with anger that the Star Citizen badge I have sewn on my Star Citizen track jacket pops off and busts through my monitor. In my paroxysms I accidentally knock my Star Citizen travel mug over and like the horseshit piece of crap that it is, it shatters, sending mountain dew into my expensive gaming rig. Sparks fly as I wave my tiny hands in anger.
I sigh, finally coming back down, and survey the ruins. “Oh well, I’ve got three or four years to build another computer before the game’s really playable.” I tighten my kickstarted belt. “In the meantime, I’d better go post on the SA thread. Sounds like some motherfuckers need to get defenestrated.”
MOMA, I hope that someone cuts off your fenestrates.
…
Sorry. That last comment was a bit…
(•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
below the belt. :c00lbert:
It’s a pledge, but is also an “order.” How is an order not a purchase? On that’s right, CIG is full of shit.
(
Taking a break from #StarCitizen today. Streaming Wing Commander 3 and then Dark Souls. Lets have some fun with older video games. Star Citizen isn't dead, its just resting today. Feel free to stop by and check out these raffles.https://t.co/lHVz3IeC3Opic.twitter.com/AmG4VQx6Js
tweet: Taking a break from #StarCitizen today. Star Citizen isn’t dead, its just resting today.)
Not dead, just resting. And gently decomposing.
G0RF
Speaking of break takers…
I tried to watch Captain Richard earlier since he was one of the regulars I’d not checked on recently. I felt honestly bad for him. He was trying to slog through 12 FPS and perform a mission. Got a location for a cargo pickup on a moon. Noted for viewers that you can’t tell which side of the moon the location is on due to poor design cues (they’ll steal Elite’s broken line approach eventually, surely.)
He descended to his pickup location then almost bit the dust when he realized that oops, he’s on the wrong side after all. It was all soooooo joyless. Even if it had been 100 frames per second it would’ve been boring enough to put Sandro to sleep. Richard was speaking longingly of giving Kingdom Come a shot since AstroPub had hooked him up.
It’s sad that 3.1 is just around the corner and yet it seems like it’s a tourniquet more than much else. They’re losing their reliable streaming ambassadors left and right due to burnout, frustration, or self-preservation but honestly, given how miserable the play experience is right now, maybe the less people streaming it the better.
**How there can be any organic demand for the game at this point is beyond me. The year end 11th hour miracle turnaround was suspicious enough but the holiday hype halo was brighter then. The Squadron livestream. The year end ship reveals. The habituated seasonal enthusiasm.
All are faded now… There’s no Gamescom this year, there’s a serious lawsuit that didn’t get slam dunk dismissed as theorycrafted, the streamers all have wandering eyes or feet. And this after CIG delivered the almighty game-changing 3.0.**
TheAgent’s leaker or LARPer spoke of needing another $200 Million. Call me crazy here but if you’re at $180 Million and 6 years of work and still ain’t found the Fun yet, maybe that money would be better spent on game developers who make that a year one priority not a problem to tackle in late Beta?
This is the game dev that never ends…
It goes on and on my friends
Some people backed because they didn’t know it was
And now they’ll pledge forever just because.
(Ad Nausium… )
His ignorant belief of “why has nobody thought of this?” Got him where he’s at. Because people had, and likely threw his idea away 10 years ago as stupid. And he’s basically been rediscovering failure at every turn because of ego and pride at thinking he’s smarter than everybody else in the world. It’s a galaxy of hubris and he’s the star in the middle.
maybe more than you should and the
not enough.
at Charlie Hall LARPing as investigative reporter.
