So, 3.0 live release just bumped to September...

[NaffNaffBobFace]

To "do it right" requires more iterations, more testing, and not missing deadlines.

Traditional game development doesn't do public Alphas. Even their beta's are limited. With Crowd funding you have more people to answer to, not less.

Show me where it says "Deadline" anywhere on the list of development dates. These are not deadlines, they are expected completion dates and it states this multiple times on the very page it lists the dates. If something causes a delay, the expected date changes based on the updated details.

No deadlines have been missed because THERE ARE NO DEADLINES.

If you think GamesCon is a valid deadline for A, B or C, thats your subjective opinion. Until you said "GamesCon" I had never heard of it and I still don't know what it is about or why I should really care. A computer game convention? Great and probably important for those who like that kind of thing, but for me GamesCon may as well be HairStyleCon - it is an irrelevance.

There are plenty of crowd funded games that don't have a public alpha. There are plenty of crowd funded games that don't even have beta access. It is a gross overstatement to say just because the money comes from multiple backers instead of one or two big companies that the masses know better. I bet Derek Smart has a basic pledge account so he can read Spectrum, would you want him to call the shots considering the beef he's raked over?

 

[Zerqz]

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

It's alright, we have this conversation literally every time a patch is coming up. I was the one asking this question or one very similar for, i think it was the 2.6.0 patch?

I think we've all been there at one point or another.

 

[Printimus]

People give him too much benefit of the doubt. If we want this project to stay honest and avoid becoming over-bloated, it is our duty to hold the developer accountable for their 'pitches'; especially when they stand to profit from misleading the backers. ~3 months late and a little slimmer on features than initially discussed, I can understand. What I refuse to turn a deaf fanboy ear to is ~8 month delay with WAY fewer features than blabbed about at last year's GamesCom (As if they were right around the corner). He lied. Straight up. If they had said nothing about December and simply said that those were their goals for the next year; I would not be upset at all. The LIE is what upsets me. It's bad form and does not speak well of their future business practices. And I understand the development process just fine. I also understand the pitfalls of over-promising and under-delivering. Tends to get folks sacked in most cases. Sure helps if your name is on the side of the building tho....

Welp, back to Sudoku on the shitter.

See I dont believe it is "our duty" to keep them in check. If you truly believe it is your duty, then stop buying concept sale ships. My guess for the 8 month delay has to do with not realizing just how much time and effort would have to go into something like 3.0. I still dont think he lied about 3.0, I believe that he didn't know just how tedious the task would be. I go through the same thing all the time when I fix aircraft, my boss asks me how long it will take to fix part A on the plane, I tell him this long, but when working on said part A, it actually takes a lot longer due to lots of unforseen circumstance, sure part A would only take as long as I said it would, but I didnt realize that I had to move part B and C out of the way first just to get to part A in the first place. I didnt knowingly lie to my boss, i just didnt forsee so many obstacles in the way.

I for one am glad that they are at least letting us test the game, they could have had us back the game back in 2012 and then hidden all the development from us until its eventual release in god knows what year when it would be "done". Do you honestly think Chris Roberts would knowingly lie to us after all the effort he has put in? "hey guys watch this, imma lie to these fools and take all their money and do something rediculous with it."

 

[Printimus]

I think the hardest part to understand for people is the process of making games. When a game is being developed by, let's say EA Games, they are given a strict deadline to compete the game by. The developers then get to work and have all these great ideas that they want to implement in the game which need new systems invented for, however, unforeseen complications will arise. The developers will be faced with having to cut certain features out of the game, sometimes massive amounts of the game because it would have pushed them past the deadline.

Why I am saying all this is because, LUCKILY, RSI does not have this problem. Because we are backing them instead of a massive company, they can make the game how it is intended to be. The price of that is us having to wait longer. In my opinion, that is a tiny price to pay for a game which will satisfy all of our childhood dreams.

I very much agree with this.

 

[Richard Bong]

Show me where it says "Deadline" anywhere on the list of development dates. These are not deadlines, they are expected completion dates and it states this multiple times on the very page it lists the dates. If something causes a delay, the expected date changes based on the updated details.

No deadlines have been missed because THERE ARE NO DEADLINES.

If you think GamesCon is a valid deadline for A, B or C, thats your subjective opinion. Until you said "GamesCon" I had never heard of it and I still don't know what it is about or why I should really care. A computer game convention? Great and probably important for those who like that kind of thing, but for me GamesCon may as well be HairStyleCon - it is an irrelevance.

There are plenty of crowd funded games that don't have a public alpha. There are plenty of crowd funded games that don't even have beta access. It is a gross overstatement to say just because the money comes from multiple backers instead of one or two big companies that the masses know better. I bet Derek Smart has a basic pledge account so he can read Spectrum, would you want him to call the shots considering the beef he's raked over?

When you announce a release schedule that is a deadline, whether you use the word or not. When you go to a convention like GamesCon and you don't have a release, especially when you said last time at that convention, you would have one, then you have missed a deadline even though you never used the word.

Up until just under a year ago, I ran QA for a Software company (9 years). Missing delivery dates, even those that you set for yourself, is bad. Missing by this much, given what they are working on for the software so it can't be delivered in time for the convention is, very simply, bad management.

Too much feature creep that should have been left for 3.1. Too much in one release, instead of more, smaller iterations, just delays final release dates and short term releases like 3.0 are delayed more than they should be.

 

[Blind Owl]

Still dont understand why everyone gets butt hurt after hearing the same news. Like, it'll come out when its good and good damned ready to.

Concur.

 

[ThunderKraken]

That be awkward.

Citizencon 2016 here's a preview of 3.0.
Citizencon 2017 hey guys, here's another preview of 3.0

 

[maynard]

That be awkward.
Citizencon 2016 here's a preview of 3.0.
Citizencon 2017 hey guys, here's another preview of 3.0

that would be a disaster PR-wise

imagine how the skeptics and doubters would pile on in the gaming press

even if they have to jettison some features until 3.1 they will deliver something called Alpha 3.0 between GamesCom and CitizenCon

 

[Printimus]

On the plus side, the reclaimer should be finished by the time we get 3.0.......that would be a nifty add-in.

 

[Blind Owl]

On the plus side, the reclaimer should be finished by the time we get 3.0.......that would be a nifty add-in.

Mmmmmmm, nom nom nom on shipz. I like it

 

[Printimus]

Mmmmmmm, nom nom nom on shipz. I like it

whoa there guy, i didnt say we would get salvage mechanics, just the ship.... kinda like how we got the starfarer even though we cant actually scoop gas and make it into fuel.

 

[Blind Owl]

whoa there guy, i didnt say we would get salvage mechanics, just the ship.... kinda like how we got the starfarer even though we cant actually scoop gas and make it into fuel.

I will nom if I want to, I will leave no ships behind
Cause your ships don't nom and if they don't nom
Well they're no ships of mine

 

[Han Burgundy]

If you truly believe it is your duty, then stop buying concept sale ships.

That is precisely what I mean when I am referring to "duty". Wallets talk.

I believe that he didn't know just how tedious the task would be.

Then he shouldn't be accepting millions of dollars to develop a video game. He knew exactly what he was up against, yet he looked into the camera and said December stone-cold confident (Just as a very large ship sale kicked off, I might add). His guilt of this stretches FAR before the 3.0 debacle. His Achilles heel is the simple fact that he talks out of his ass sometimes. That has real-world impact, and he has been irresponsible many many times in the past with this.

Do you honestly think Chris Roberts would knowingly lie to us after all the effort he has put in?

Absolutely.

Meh. Whatever, tho. You've got your perfectly valid opinion, and I've got my slightly saltier one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Bickering won't make it come out any faster, so pass me a beer already. :beers:

 

[Stevetank]

That is precisely what I mean when I am referring to "duty". Wallets talk.

Then he shouldn't be accepting millions of dollars to develop a video game. He knew exactly what he was up against, yet he looked into the camera and said December stone-cold confident (Just as a very large ship sale kicked off, I might add). His guilt of this stretches FAR before the 3.0 debacle. His Achilles heel is the simple fact that he talks out of his ass sometimes. That has real-world impact, and he has been irresponsible many many times in the past with this.

Absolutely.

Meh. Whatever, tho. You've got your perfectly valid opinion, and I've got my slightly saltier one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Bickering won't make it come out any faster, so pass me a beer already. :beers:

I hope you don't mind but I took some of your salt and put it on my pretzels. Everyone is welcome to have some. I also brought beer. Ignore the label, everyone gets their favorite beer.

 

[Blind Owl]

so pass me a beer already.

*passes beer*
Cheers!

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

When you announce a release schedule that is a deadline, whether you use the word or not.

Okay, lets look at the production schedule for 3.0: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report

CAVEATS
But also, we would like to establish some ground rules before proceeding:

I.Quality will always be our number one goal. We set out on this journey by looking at the gaming landscape and asking: can we do better? We continue to ask that question about everything we do. As a result, we will ALWAYS extend timelines or re-do features and content if we do not feel they are up to our standards. The freedom to fight for a new level of quality in game development is what crowd funding has allowed us, and we will continue to fight to make sure Star Citizen is the best possible game it can be.

II.The estimates we provide are just that: estimates. They are based on our knowledge and experience, but there are many aspects of game development that are impossible to predict because they literally cover uncharted territory. You will see the same estimates we use in our internal planning, but it is important to understand that in many cases (especially with groundbreaking engineering tasks) these estimates are often subject to change due to unforeseen complexity in implementing features.

III.The time expected for bug fixing and polishing is also very hard to estimate, increasingly so in online and multiplayer situations. The complexity and the difficulty in testing at a large scale make it harder to reproduce and isolate bugs in order to fix them. We base our estimates, again, on our experience, but we also know that it’s possible for a single bug to cause a delay of days or weeks when a hundred others might be fixed instantly.

IV.Internal schedules, the ones you will now be privy to, tend to have aggressive dates to help the team focus and scope their tasks, especially in the case of tech development. Every team, even a team blessed with the kind of support and freedom you have allowed us, needs target dates in order to focus and deliver their work.

V.This schedule doesn’t cover everything being worked on across Cloud Imperium Games, but is meant to highlight our aims for the remainder of the year on the Persistent Universe.

VI.This schedule doesn’t include every audio, vfx, tech art, etc. task. Those are detailed in our departmental sub-schedules.

VIIAlthough technology is shared between the two games, this does not reflect the Squadron 42 schedule. That will be released at a future date.

VIII.These aim dates are determined based on our current staff. Additional hiring will potentially allow us to bring in some dates below.

Please read through points 1 to 8... So... what part of the above is not 100% clear?

Many things can change an estimate, if staff members change, if tools made to speed up a task become obsolete or no longer function, not to mention they have only just finished making the tools to make the game - You worked in QC, Quality Control/check, my wild assumption is that QC (and usually localisation in the same building) looks at a finished product and tests it to destruction... that is the end of the line in regard to where CIG are right now.

I was lucky enough to visit the QC department of Rockstar and interview its manager during my studies (the studio was formally Tarantula games, you may have heard of it?). Was an interesting, truly international setup.

Up until just under a year ago, I ran QA for a Software company (9 years). Missing delivery dates, even those that you set for yourself, is bad. Missing by this much, given what they are working on for the software so it can't be delivered in time for the convention is, very simply, bad management.

Thank you for clarifying your position as someone with previous industry experience. Again, I have to point out, CIG are working in a very different system to the one you know and toiled relentlessly in for years. It would be like comparing the USA postal system to the Chinese one. They both do the same thing, but putting a US zip-code on a parcel in china will mean less than nothing. Your experience of game development is wonderful to have a view from and please do, however you are judging a system that is very different to the one you have just short of a decades experience of.

I see why GamesCon is so important for you now, you lived the industry, it has been a huge part of your life... but 96% of backers have not and do not and don't care about an annual industry shin-dig. No Mans Sky sucked nuts but I bet it looked amazing at GamesCon. Star Citizen won't be a No Mans Sky - CIG allow it, we the backers won't allow it.

 

[Sintha]

Gamescon, a 3.0 release sale, and CitizenCon I do believe is when they said there would be sales.

Thanks mate, looks like gamescom in august is the best bet. Ill hold out hope and wallet until then.

 

[DragonHeart]

I've lost the hype long ago, but haven't lost the interest in SC.
I only keep weekly updates from ATV these days.
I believe the game will be out when its ready.

 

[MurgenTemplar]

Just make the best out of it, like I do