What is Reddit's opinion of Murica Eagle?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> From my experience of testing various games and knowing a game developer,

Ok....? You know a game developer. From my experience as. an. actual. game. developer, I have some real experience. I've also been programming professionally for 20 years on some giant multi-million dollar projects and have an extensive art background. If I took a job at CIG, it would probably be a pay decrease.

> The amount of content in the Alpha is abysmal and ridden with horrible bugs.

The definition of an alpha is that it's not feature complete. Bugs in alpha are standard. They get sorted out in Beta. Lack of features is standard.

MMOs take a while. Games this complicated take time. And they are making two separate games. Plus supporting the alpha. They had to build up no studios and 7 people to 4 studios and hire 300 people. Any seasoned developer knows this all takes time.

> horrible bugs. That's all I see, I don't really care about promises and PR showcases,

I heard the same thing when they showed off 2.0 last year. It came out. If that's all you see, you're not looking very hard. I'll make you a deal: If Squadron 42 isn't out in 2017, I'll buy you a game. I'm serious.

> The amount of content in the Alpha is abysmal

• New content in 2.5. Grim Hex and the 37th flyable ship.
  
• 2.7 will literally have an entire solar system's worth of content.
• Game development is funny. It's crap until towards the end. Everything is broken, everything is changing. But things develop at an exponential rate until the very end (where polishing occurs). They're in the knee of the curve now. In the past 12 months they've created more than the previous 3 years combined. And in the next 12 months, they'll make more content than the previous years combined.
• Once subsumption, procedural planets, and the new item system are released then development should skyrocket.
• I still think there's more content and gameplay than crap like SW: Battlefront. ;)

> I know that prototypes can be quite literally years from being playable.

True. But Procedural planets will be in 2.7. You can look at the Bengal carrier and realize it's not a prototype. Grim Hex is not a prototype. Squadron 42 is not a prototype.

They changed the scope when backers gave them a hundred million dollars more than they were expecting. Good or bad, they're trying to make a hundred million dollar game. I know it sucks, but if it stresses you that much, calm down. Take a break. It's just a game.

> I've seen that backers of this game are okay if Squadron 42 comes out in 2018 with PU coming out in mid-2020s.

I'd be just as angry as you. Some people are okay with waiting that long. I think that's ridiculous. But waiting 6 years for an MMO, AND a single player game seems perfectly reasonable. What we consider appropriate waiting times for two games may differ. But I think we can both agree we just want them to be released and be great.

I do think CIG fucked up in some areas. Star Marine's delay, and lack of communication was terrible. It sounds like it may be in 2.6 which is nice.

> To me that would constitute as a failure

Well, at least we can agree that we have different definitions of failure.

From a business point of view, they have zero debt. They are about to release a triple-A single player game. People are so excited they're giving them millions of dollars every month. I can't think of a publisher that wouldn't kill to be in that kind of position.

...But for the gamers, we want great games. Only time will tell if that happens. Chris Roberts is notorious for making late games with grand visions, but they've all been worth it.

> First of all, I'm not angry and I apologize if that's how it sounded, not at you, not even at CIG for that matter, I was just expressing my astonishment.

If you're not angry... then there's no need to apologize my friend! We can have different opinions, and things don't get translated well. You just seemed upset towards me about CIG's over promising. That's all.

And I can even understand being upset. I'm upset there was no SQ42 at CitizenCon.

> Well, I've been hearing people on this sub claiming they backed CIG regardless of what they even ship simply because they support the "vision".

Yes. I call them fanboys and idiots. We should support responsible companies, and not give anybody a free pass. Blind adoration and love frustrates me almost as much as blind anger and hatred. They're a company, and even with the best intentions, people must always remember companies exist to make money.

• I keep track of their promises, because that's what a responsible backer should do.
• I keep track of the money, employee count, and estimated expenses because that's what a responsible backer should do.

> That's it. Everything not listed here is practically non-existent from the stretch goals

But it's still more than 1%. You can even count them all.

I'll count it for you because I have all this documented. I've got 68 stretch goals with 110 Stretch goal bullet point promises. (More if you break them out). You listed out 23 items out of 110. That's 21%. I'm biased. I admit that. So let's cut that number in half. It's still over 10%.

Others I think you also may have missed (some of these are debatable):

1. Every backer gets a laser pistol: Every backer actually has a gun (as far as I know), so technically true.
2. Gladius: Flyable, in the game.
3. Hadesian Artifact: We have artifacts. Not sure if they're hadesian or not.
4. Xi'An Space Plant: In game.
5. Jetpack: Again every backer gets this.
6. Ballistic Preacher XXII: In game.
7. MobiGlas rig: I'm not sure which is the Explorer variant. But everybody has a Mobiglas.
8. Holographic Ship viewer: You sort of missed this. This is Online for every ship (except the Banu MerchantMan). It's under HoloViewer in the Technical Overview section. Since you may be on mobile, this is what it looks like.
9. Enhanced Ship modularity: Enhanced is a loose term. So it's vague. But they have modules that you can even buy for the Avenger, and Vanguard. I can swap out missiles, coolers, weapons, etc.
10. Anvil Gladiator: Flyable, in the game.
11. Zero gravity simulation
12. EVA combat
13. Facial Capture System
14. M-50

But I'll grant you some of these are open to interpretation. Still by any measure you give me, I can at least prove they're more than 1% complete. Even using your lists.

Also:

You're listing ships at 20-40% that are already conceped, modeled, textured, UI installed, damage system installed, flyable, fighting capable, and in the game for anybody to play.

Why?...because the cargo system isn't in yet? The same cargo system that we'll probably be getting in like 2 months? And you still give it a 20% I'm curious what do you feel is 80% of the work?

I'm curious. What's left on these?

• The module system? Already partially implemented (read not 0%). There's already coolers,power generators,and shield units.
• The item system? Partially implemented Ready in 2-3 months. We're on item 2.0 system now. Shown live. Ready in Alpha 3.0 (or 2.6? Item system 2.0 has had its code merged in 2.5, but it's not fully implemented yet.
• The piping system? Part of item 2.0.
• Swapping/Replacing components? It's a modeled prop, with some additional swapping animations to swap components.
• The Repair system? Ships have been repairable since 2.0. The repair system is just getting an upgrade. Separate promise.
• Additional items like scanning or E-War? Seriously those items are separate items with separate promises. By doing so, you're docking 39 ships as being unfinished, and even counting the item as a separate promise too. That's like saying a car isn't a car until it's got windshield wiper blades. They're flyable. In the game available for all to play. The other systems are separate promises. Otherwise you can say nothing is done until 2030 because that's at least how long they plan to keep working on Star Citizen. Even if the game is already out.

I will grant you that these are still a lot of work. But it's definitely not 80% of the work.

If you judge by functionality, then yes the Reliant is 40% complete. But then combat ships like the Vanguard or Scout are closer to 80-90%. If you judge by work done, and work left to do (in my opinion, the most fair estimate), then the ships are easily 90% done. You're also negating everything else, because you don't feel it adds anything to gameplay too. A fully flyable ship that completes the item as listed in the stretch goals is also not done. You're being very selective here.

If you think the world is only in black or white. 0 or 100, there's still enough there to say it's more than 1%. But not if you cherry pick what is and isn't acceptable based on random criteria you make up. The Mustang was promised in the game. It's in the game.

As far as the hundred star systems. It's easy. Frankfurt and the procedural tech team didn't even start until 2015. I estimate they're taking 2 years to launch. That's 50% done from launch. Let's say they get to 100 star systems in 4 years. Okay. That's still 2 years out of 6 years. That's 33%.

I talked with Brian Chambers about the technology in detail at CitizenCon. Systems are going to start coming in insanely fast. I actually have my own experience with procedural planets, so I know how this stuff works. My stuff is fairly limited (just a couple guys working in their spare time), but I know it enough to know that the hard stuff is done. Just one of my games is download hundreds of times a week. Even my crappy 24 hour android games see close to 100k downloads (when you count all platforms). I'm a professional programmer with even extensive art experience. From here...they just need to reap the rewards by attaching their army of artists on it.

It's a marathon. You're looking at it as either they finish or they don't. I'm looking like at what they've done, and how far they need to go. I have experience making games. Trust me, if you don't see an explosion of new content in the next 12 months, I give you complete permission to just shit all over my arguments! But I'm pretty confident I know what I'm talking about.