Am I missing something? Alot of hate and discontent...

[Crymsan]

A lot of the salt is quite deservedly given due to a lot of false expectations given. Squadron 42 coming out deadline 2016 then 2017 now we might get a presentation on it coming out sometime in the future! Chris Roberts saying quarterly updates seriously why does he do it we know its horseshit and still it gets said. 3.0 is very like 2.0 i.e. it has been said that it is the foundation and everything will speed up after and its all coming together. You know the fool me once thing! The other laugh is all the building blocks are in place and development will speed up *(the optimist) how many times does this have to be proven false?

3.0 itself has been badly handled we can talk development in parallel coming out last December we can talk the fact they have changed burn down so many times to imply it wasn't far away when they know know it was ages away. They promise to much and deliver very little that will always leave people feeling underwhelmed. It seems they are so scared honesty will drive the funds away so they have to be dishonest. People laughling call it open development it really is not. Do you really know what stage the game is at? Do they have anything developed in parallel? Will the current funds build anything at all>?

The fact that this project is still being funded shows how deep the hope runs.

It is also usually better to discuss problems *(vent the salt) than not which would probably just lead to more refunds.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

You know the fool me once thing!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxhQXV1-kFA

 

[hardroc77]

Good bye...Good riddance
Hope the door hits them in the ass on the way out....

I don't want to spend the next 20 years playing with these 'gamers'. Do you?
Hell no.
Don't like what you see? Get the HELL OUT OF HERE.
Go back to EVE On Line & My Little Pink Pony and chase desktop icons around your monitor.
I hear EA some more 'games' being developed.

Star Citizen is for Real Gamers.
Star Citizen is for TESTies.

So... what are you really trying to say?

I agree, wholeheartedly. And that will help clean up the servers when 3.0 goes live.

 

[CosmicTrader]

Those who understand the state of the game and where its headed are more positive than ever!

Some of those (not all) that don't understand, don't want to understand.

 

[Nightlane]

Some of the salt is justifiable. It has been 5 years since the kickstarter and over two years since we saw the demo of planetary tech and them seamlessly going from space to landing on a procedurally created planet. 3.0 is over a year late in its release and so there is clearly a trend of ampled expectations of promises that the release of new amazing content is soon upon the community only to be greatly delayed and when released far from expectations. While we know that the ship pipeline has been severely disrupted multiple times in the past few years most recently with the introduction of item 2.0 causing them to have to go back to all of the created ships and rework them to fit with the new tech, geometric's, animations and finalized artwork design, this does not translate well to the public who already saw and have flown many of those ships in 2.0. Rework of code of assets and such sucks because it takes a lot of time and while the long term beneficent mandates its task the final product generally shows none of it. And that is what we see now and why there are so many tears. People have waited are eager to play this magnificent game and do not see why there has been no progress made in over 2 years. So as much as you and I understand the rework was necessary to accommodate the expanded scope and to facilitate tool creation that will allow faster completion of assets it does not translate well. The game engine itself is still in a state of flux as they attempt to rework it and until its finished I fully expect things to take years more to reach completion.

They had to sacrifice at the start building crappy systems so backers, who wanted to see anything fast, could see some content, fire some shots, and fly some ships. Now, after the devs got experience and $$$, we have been suffering that they had to redo all that tech, now in a more serious way.

(I really though that by example they could build the delta patcher from the beginning, that type of system do not needs much work to be done, I myself had done something similar, not a beautiful UI but the backend updating system in less than two weeks, me being alone. Guild Wars 1 have a prodigious system to do this, it is wonderful, you do not need to upgrade all to start playing as it updates on the go if you desire to do not wait for him to finish all his work).

Now that the tech is being serious, I expect to see faster and faster development, as we have been seen lately. I remember that one year ago they were working at a max of 2 or 3 ships at the same time and now they are working at a bunch of them.

 

[Xenorak]

If I had to put my feelings into words, I am overall pleased with the progress thus far. They've also managed to speed the progress by making development almost like an assembly line between departments and stages.

Though at the same time I feel there are some things the devs could put off until later, like the new Quantum effects, while amazing, were not exactly necessary. Mainly just minor things like that, of course I have no idea how long those changes take, it could be a single day, a week, a month? So I can't really complain without knowing the time and man-power required.

But yeah, overall very pleased.

 

[Vavrik]

If I had to put my feelings into words, I am overall pleased with the progress thus far. They've also managed to speed the progress by making development almost like an assembly line between departments and stages.

Though at the same time I feel there are some things the devs could put off until later, like the new Quantum effects, while amazing, were not exactly necessary. Mainly just minor things like that, of course I have no idea how long those changes take, it could be a single day, a week, a month? So I can't really complain without knowing the time and man-power required.

But yeah, overall very pleased.

That assembly line of development is how you do it, works best if you are totally working in an Agile way, but they're learning and it's coming together. I'd only be concerned about things like the quantum drive effect if we start to see things that were not announced for a particular version appearing in that version. That would indicate something is wrong with CIG's methodology. That's never happened, right?

 

[Bruttle]

I'd only be concerned about things like the quantum drive effect if we start to see things that were not announced for a particular version appearing in that version. That would indicate something is wrong with CIG's methodology. That's never happened, right?

That doesn't take into account simultaneous development though. Last I heard, they had over 360 employees. Not everyone can be working on the same part of the game. Some are working on SQ42, some on 3.0, some on 3.1, some on ships, some on sound, etc. I'm sure the list goes on and on. Once something is ready, it's dropped in the game and the team moves on to another task.

So when something shows up early, it can just as easily be an indication that a team finished early. Now that's not really the case with some of the items that were intended for 3.1+ that made it into 3.0. That's a result of this release being a year late.

3.0 itself has been badly handled we can talk development in parallel coming out last December we can talk the fact they have changed burn down so many times to imply it wasn't far away when they know know it was ages away. They promise to much and deliver very little that will always leave people feeling underwhelmed. It seems they are so scared honesty will drive the funds away so they have to be dishonest. People laughling call it open development it really is not. Do you really know what stage the game is at? Do they have anything developed in parallel? Will the current funds build anything at all>?

Aaaaand this is where that arguement falls apart. Simultaneous development is fine. Running behind schedule is fine, even expected from time to time. However, chronically late on every single estimate? Over a year late on 3.0? That can only be the result of two things, inexperience and bad time management.

In my professional world, time estimates are very important. I schedule my crew's and my time according to the list of jobs I have. Every hour has a price attached to it and I need to know how long a particular task will take so I can work out how much it will cost. I also need to to be accurate to minimize downtime and be able to prepare appropriately.

That usually works out pretty good as long as I am familiar with the systems, materials, and tasks involved with the job. It becomes extremely difficult to gauge though when I am doing something I have never done before. All bets are off at that point. That's when I swap from a solid estimate to a "time and materials" job. In other words, I have no idea how long it will take me and I don't even try to estimate the time and cost.

That's what I see in 3.0. They had no idea how long it would take. Given how late they were, I would also guess they had to redo quite a bit of work as well. Sometimes, you start out on a path to the finished product only to find that path is a dead end and doesn't actually lead to your destination. Somewhere around the end of last year, they had to take a huge step back and try another path. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

The chronically late part though, there's no excuse for that. If you NEVER make your time estimates, it can only be one of two things. The first is bad time management. Have you ever had an employee that is always late? I used to be one. It didn't matter if I woke up 20 min or 2 hours before work. I was always late. That is bad time management at it's finest. No matter how much time I had, I would always overspend that time and end up behind schedule. The same can happen professionally as well.

The other is, as Crymsan pointed out, if the estimator is too scared to properly state the time needed. If the customer expects something done in a month, but it will take three, what do you do? If you are confident in your skills and work, you talk them through the reasons why it will take three months. You bring the customer to your level of understanding and everyone is amicable. If you are scared and lost though, you simply say you can do it in a month and privately expect to run waaaaay over.

So ultimately, that's what I see when I look at the situation. I see 3.0 running late because they have no idea how long it will take. I see them making several big mistakes in the discovery process. I see some time management issues. However, I also see CIG as scared of us. Like Crymsan said, I think they are scared to tell the truth for fear we will stop funding them. So, they intentionally understate the time estimates and are chronically late as a result.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

That can only be the result of two things, inexperience and bad time management.

I'm sure it could result from a lot more than just those two:

Atomic war would really slow development down.
Zombies.
Mass food poisoning (that actually happened).
Hypnosis could have had an effect.
Maternity leave (that happened too).
Reading all the forum salt would take a damn long time.
Social Media in the office.
Chris Roberts being replaced by a clone would take a while, clones take ages to grow.
Robot overlords.
Robot underlords.
Losing your keys and having to find them every day.
Unreliable public transport.
Lord Buckethead.
The Alcopocalypse.
The second coming of Christ.
The Canteen redecoration.
The Canteen redecoration committee.
The wrong colour paint used in the Canteen Redecoration.
The Canteen re-redecoration committee.
The wrong colour paint used in the Canteen Re-redecoration.
The Canteen re-re-redecoration committee.
The wrong colour paint used in the Canteen Re-re-redecoration.
Bricking up the Canteen.
Being asked nicely by three world governments.
Being asked un-nicely by three world governments.
Toilet paper shortage.
Fifteen paperclips.
A cheese-grater tied to the back of a cat.
Floods.
Droughts.
Storms.
Sunshine.
Electric mayhem.
Someone leaving the volume on the TV in the canteen on an odd number.
Ideas.
No Ideas.
Bring your pet to work day.
Bring your pet to work week.
Leave your pet at work over the holidays.
Holidays.
A foot long hot-dog.
The history of 16th century London depicted in dance.
Bowling.
A paper-cut in just the wrong place.
A paper-cut in just the right place.

And most important of all:

Adding another day of development to the project for every time someone says they are miss-managing the project. That'd add years to it.

 

[Bambooza]

They had to sacrifice at the start building crappy systems so backers, who wanted to see anything fast, could see some content, fire some shots, and fly some ships. Now, after the devs got experience and $$$, we have been suffering that they had to redo all that tech, now in a more serious way.

(I really though that by example they could build the delta patcher from the beginning, that type of system do not needs much work to be done, I myself had done something similar, not a beautiful UI but the backend updating system in less than two weeks, me being alone. Guild Wars 1 have a prodigious system to do this, it is wonderful, you do not need to upgrade all to start playing as it updates on the go if you desire to do not wait for him to finish all his work).

Now that the tech is being serious, I expect to see faster and faster development, as we have been seen lately. I remember that one year ago they were working at a max of 2 or 3 ships at the same time and now they are working at a bunch of them.

Not sure it was as much of a sacrifice as the original concept was just a updated wing commander game with some multiplayer elements. All of which would have easily been achievable in the Crytek engine and in fact the software houses they contracted with were doing a good enough job of it to have pulled it off years ago. Its the influx of huge amounts of capital that caused them to greatly expand the scope of the game well beyond what they were initially prepared to accomplish as well as back them into a corner were they needed to show progress from day one towards the new direction. The other aspect is one that is way to common for software companies and that is being stuck to a given implementation and not ditching it soon enough for something else. In this case the issue was sticking to Crytek engine and attempt to make what at first seemed small changes to incorporate a battlefield like game in space with smaller map sizes ship sizes and a player server load of under 100 people. While the engine could be tweeked to handle this scope change it would take far more effort and needed developers far more experienced in the engine code itself instead of designers who knew how to make content for the engine. Then the scope changed again with the introduction of ships far larger then the Constellation and would have been the doom of this game it if wasn't for the lucky break in Crytek collapsing and releasing into the market developers intimately familiar with the engine. It has been an interesting bumpy road and I have to say being on the outside looking in at what they are doing and releasing I am excited about the future of this game even if its 5 years late.

 

[Bambooza]

So ultimately, that's what I see when I look at the situation. I see 3.0 running late because they have no idea how long it will take. I see them making several big mistakes in the discovery process. I see some time management issues. However, I also see CIG as scared of us. Like Crymsan said, I think they are scared to tell the truth for fear we will stop funding them. So, they intentionally understate the time estimates and are chronically late as a result.

Every software company I have worked for suffers from all three of these. I get asked how long do you think this will take and i go where is the feature design requirement document. Typically its still a work in progress and even if its done its missing most of the information as the question is not fully understood, just the knowledge we have to be first to market. So in the end it does come down to a battle between these two.

 

[FZD]

The secret truths about game development:
The people who spend the most time and effort to complain the loudest on the forums, tend to be the people who will spend the most money anyways.
Pay attention to the tense: It's not "spent", it's usually "will spend".
That is to say, they cry and complain exactly because they feel this project is so important to them.

 

[Bruttle]

Every software company I have worked for suffers from all three of these. I get asked how long do you think this will take and i go where is the feature design requirement document. Typically its still a work in progress and even if its done its missing most of the information as the question is not fully understood, just the knowledge we have to be first to market. So in the end it does come down to a battle between these two.

That's a good point. It's not just in software development either. The disconnect between the person who had the idea, the person who is managing the building of the idea, and the person who is actually making the idea real, is huge. The person who had the original idea either doesn't have the knowledge or hasn't determined the details clear enough to consider the idea "complete". The person(people) managing the building always want to cut the project overhead with no consideration to practicality. Then there's the unfortunate one(s) that are tasked with the job of making that idea come into reality. They have to do so with no information, nowhere near enough budget, and documentation that describes something that is literally impossible to do...

 

[Nightlane]

I am a coder. You should only worry if CIGs money starts to go down.

 

[Bambooza]

I am a coder. You should only worry if CIGs money starts to go down.

Not worried about that and honestly this past year I have to say the company CIG has matured into a full fledged development house and I am comfortable in them finally being capable of making this masterpiece. Unless Chris develops a cocaine habit between now and then... They finally have a clear direction and mostly flushed out scope which is no longer requiring reworking of all of the assets. The engine is being flushed out as more tools come line the designers are now able to truly start adding content. While some features are missing like mining, bounty hunting, ship items are still missing they are not disruptive to the engine itself due to key parts already implemented with persistence and item 2.0, simply need the game play logic added. I think the speed at which they have taken the 600 from concept to gray box is showing how fast the tools and the ship pipeline is now which adds to the excitement of seeing some of the larger ships far sooner then expected sometime after game launch.

 

[Richard Bong]

So lately, I have been seeing more and more people voicing their dissatisfaction with SC. They have been getting on 3.0 test servers and what they are finding is leading them either flaming CIG, quit, or both.

I have been following the 3.0 release closely. I haven't played it yet despite having been invited a while back. I am in no hurry and don't want to spoil the experience for myself with patch frustrations. So I am keeping up with the latest patch notes and release schedule while at the same time, trying not to watch any of the gameplay.

What I have found while orbiting the 3.0 release, is that there is a ton of hate and discontent suddenly being vocalized. Sure, to some extent it has been there since day one. This just took it up a notch though. Reddit, Youtube, and various other outlets have really stepped it up with refund tutorials, dissatisfaction videos, etc.

So am I missing something? From what I can gather, they jumped onto the current 3.0 build and found it to be minimalistic and buggy. They were expecting big planets, tons of missions, and everything smooth. Instead they found the polar opposite. That lead to a lackluster experience and the players started asking "what has CIG been doing the last year?"

To me, 3.0 is self evident. The simple fact that the planets (moons in this case) exist at all is proof of the last year. When you add in the item system and subsumption, it feels more like the first time we actually see the core of the game. The entire game had to be reworked for the item system. Subsumption is the introduction of the AI, and the addition of planetary tech is quite literally the first time we are seeing the actual "map". Everything prior was just a skybox with a couple intractable space stations.

The way I see it, everything is promising. You look forward to 3.1 and beyond and it looks so much simpler than 3.0. So I would imagine they will come out much, much faster. You look at how buggy CIG is putting out 3.0, the "abridged" version they are releasing, all this while lifting the NDA, and to me it couldn't be more promising.

The major criticisms I am seeing is that CR is allegedly a perfectionist to a self destructive level. He micromanages to the detriment of production, adds new features fatally, and continually redoes work without any regard for cost and efficiency. People point at the last year and the status of the 3.0 test as proof.

But how can you point at this and claim it's proof? It's certainly not perfectionism. From what I understand, the first release after the NDA lift was near unplayable. Feature creep hasn't held it back, it's feature light actually. If anything, it is proof that CIG knows they are a year behind schedule and need to get this shit out NOW. It looks to me like the very things they are complaining about is the proof that these issues aren't really issues.

Meanwhile, aside from a few questionable sales choices, I haven't been more excited for the future. To me, it all looks like downhill from here. From my limited programming knowlege, it looks like 3.1-4.0 is much, much, much easier. It feels like this is the first time we are actually able to see the game and the rest are just details. Before this, we didn't even know if the game was possible. To me, this is the proof of concept.

The issue I have with 3.0 is most of the bugs are things they were supposed to have squashed back in August. I have been hitting bugs they "fixed" on "bug smashers."
It was pushed back from july because they didn't like how the Mobi-glass looked and other UI issues. the Mobi-glass still doesn't work well even after the patches we have seen since PTU. It was pushed back from August because of "stability" but I have yet to be able to complete a mission without a bug preventing me from doing so, usually resulting in a crash. Most of the time I can't even get through half the airlocks on Port Olisar.
And the frame rate is so poor that it is difficult to tell if you hit a bug or a network timeout.

This is a build that was supposed to be done in July, and they were supposed to be just working on stability and bugs since then, yet they were still adding features this week.

The feeling I get is the only reason PTU went live when it did was they were afraid they would make no money during the anniversary sale. It is a good thing they finally hit a deadline they couldn't push, but they were definitely not prepared for it.
At the rate they are going with stability we will be lucky to have a stable build by February. Note I am glad they finally did get it into the hands of people to test the build. It should have been in Evocati hands back in May.

I ran QA for a software company for 9 years, the build and QA procedures they have in place at CIG are horrific. The feature creep, even more so.

Now this is not to say that I don't like the game, or that I don't want to play, or even that I am not going to continue testing PTU. I am not asking for a refund. I am just stating, given my experience, things that should be obvious to anyone in the software industry.

Sorry. It is just frustrating seeing things done this way. :)

Go ahead with the torches, pitchforks, and the lynching. :)

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I ran QA for a software company for 9 years, the build and QA procedures they have in place at CIG are horrific. The feature creep, even more so.

From a management perspective, CIG is in an impossible position. First of all, the project is too large to create the sense of urgency necessary to perform on time and on budget. It was all paid for up front, so there is no way to tell workers what their performance "needs" to be. It is what it is and the good folks doing their jobs are not going to be motivated to work 10 hours days and 6 day weeks in order to come in on schedule.

It's important to note that in general, people require managers because they don't do their best work unless they are managed, and in this situation, CIG is constantly behind yet finds no alternatives to what they are doing. Yeah, Chris could dig into his pockets and pay more folks, but that would not necessarily fix any particular development issue. I'd like to see the ships people paid for delivered in more timely fashion, but even if Chris hired a couple more two person teams, they would not necessarily get the job done on time, because there is no timeline. As soon as you make a milestone fluid, and folks are not concerned with their jobs, they will relax. That is human nature.

It's instructive to the modern manager what happened decades ago at Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks. When they designed the U2 Spyplane, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 stealth fighter, they brought all those projects in on time and within the original budget. The only way to do that is by doing what Kelly Johnson did--he sat all his engineers down at the same table and had them work shoulder to shoulder, so they had perfect communication between all the various parts of the task, they were all accountable to each other for their performance, and they all knew they had a schedule they had to keep or the project would go bust. Modern SCRUM and "agile" methods are modeled after the Skunkworks model, and try to create the same communications Skunkworks had, but Johnson had no middle managers. His engineers all reported directly and continuously to him and to each other, so there was no need to have engineers waste time writing reports for middle management to deliver higher up. They just did the work. What CIG is doing is apparently the polar opposite, and all their workers appear to be millennials, who are more interested in bean bag chairs, free food and feeling they are making an impact (whatever that is) than they are in getting the job done on time.

Given the conditions, and the fact this was all paid up front, I see no way to actually deliver anything on schedule. I think we're all just stuck with a messy process. Just so long as the end results are good, who's to complain apart from that we are all anxious to see it happen?

 

[Pug76]

So I just checked me Email , erm 3.0 is now Feature Locked . So that means that's all there is for this version .

Good news i guess because it also means they're now going to polish the Turd and at some point release it to the baying public .

Can't wait :ghost:

 

[Nightlane]

The issue I have with 3.0 is most of the bugs are things they were supposed to have squashed back in August. I have been hitting bugs they "fixed" on "bug smashers."
It was pushed back from july because they didn't like how the Mobi-glass looked and other UI issues. the Mobi-glass still doesn't work well even after the patches we have seen since PTU. It was pushed back from August because of "stability" but I have yet to be able to complete a mission without a bug preventing me from doing so, usually resulting in a crash. Most of the time I can't even get through half the airlocks on Port Olisar.
And the frame rate is so poor that it is difficult to tell if you hit a bug or a network timeout.

This is a build that was supposed to be done in July, and they were supposed to be just working on stability and bugs since then, yet they were still adding features this week.

The feeling I get is the only reason PTU went live when it did was they were afraid they would make no money during the anniversary sale. It is a good thing they finally hit a deadline they couldn't push, but they were definitely not prepared for it.
At the rate they are going with stability we will be lucky to have a stable build by February. Note I am glad they finally did get it into the hands of people to test the build. It should have been in Evocati hands back in May.

I ran QA for a software company for 9 years, the build and QA procedures they have in place at CIG are horrific. The feature creep, even more so.

Now this is not to say that I don't like the game, or that I don't want to play, or even that I am not going to continue testing PTU. I am not asking for a refund. I am just stating, given my experience, things that should be obvious to anyone in the software industry.

Sorry. It is just frustrating seeing things done this way. :slight_smile:

Go ahead with the torches, pitchforks, and the lynching. :slight_smile:

I can do an streaming session for you if you want :-p

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Ah, the salt threads.... There were a few popping up around here on the Testie forums as well.


Seeing 3.0 a week ago made me feel disappointed and it seemed hopeless, but it improved significantly, to the point I can't wait to play it. And this is the most important thing about 3.0. Actual progress, at last, after 5 freaking years.

I've written multiple pages worth of gibberish about the salt and how ppl are right, and wrong to be angry at CIG and CR, and how today children and gamers are mostly brainwashed idiots, and how most of you might know how managment and programming and such should work, but have absolutely no fucking clue how it works in the reality of working for a micromanagement freak dreamer such as CR. Of which I have way more experience with than healthy for any sane person, although not with CR ofcourse.
Then I hit Ctrl-A and Delete. At least I got it out of my system.
Also, I almost went into writing about how "journalism" ceased to exist with the advent of pay-per-click, thus making for all the bad press for Star Citizen, but that's another story....

And then I spent another 2 hours and did it again!
I'm kinda afraid some of you would be offended by parts of it, so I deleted it all. Testies are besties, right?
Got this one saved in a text file though, it's was a little bit over 10K characters of gibberish, wanted to keep for posterity lol

The Important thing is, that despite all the delays, mismanagement, bad marketing, fake promises and outright lies, all the salt, anger, hate, and fake news, 3.0 might end up as something playable and FUN by the end of December! Or it won't, no promises...