Firesprite in partnership with CIG to make Theaters of War

DontTouchMyHoHos · Mar 19, 2021

Heard nothing of this company, but pushing the work out of house adds difficulties via communication. Depends on how much freedom they give vs how well they can understand intent. I would think if a CIG employee says we need more time, or this cant be done it will be better understood and more likely to happen. With this if they say that, its pretty much a business transaction and would be forced as such. Easier to bite a bullet when you are the ones asking vs someone your paying to do a job asking.

Texelis · Mar 19, 2021

I don't get it, but I'm slow. So, it's part of the game right? something they've been working on for years. They announce it, seem to shelve it, then farm it out? ok.

Game dev is confusing

Texelis · Mar 19, 2021

Montoya said:
ToW is like Arena Commander, its a game within the game. Not really connected to the PU.

They are outsourcing because this is something they dont want their in-house more expensive devs wasting their hours on.

I get that. Regardless of how they want to portion things off with names and road maps, it's still CIG making a game in my mind. And to your second statement, then why make such a big deal about it in the first place? No one asked for ToW. I kinda thought that was what the PU was going to be used for. They pumped it, got the hype, now seemingly too busy to finish. Like it's beneath them now, lol. They're obviously having problems or they would have released it last year or whatever.

This just in, EA to make PU because stuff and things

Anyway, all good.

Vavrik · Mar 19, 2021

The way I see this kind of thing is CIG making relationships with other companies in the industry. That's a good thing generally, and can enhance CIG's abilities without removing focus on the core game. And some of the companies they make this kind of relationship with might one day end up owned by CIG... Look ma, new employees and I don't even have to train them!

BUTUZ · Mar 20, 2021

Ah the TOW that we saw years ago and was "nearly ready come play it"

CIG couldnt meet a deadline if their lives depended on it. That's what you get not having a publisher to give you a deadline ultimatum I guess.

DontTouchMyHoHos · Mar 20, 2021

Montoya said:
If I had to guess, the reason why Arena Commander is important is that they get constant and fast feedback from the combat that takes place.

If they buff the shields or weapons on a one ship, due to the constant stream of data from active combat going on, they can quickly see how its balancing with the other ships and weapons.

Same with ToW. By simply looking at the stats being generated from the constant combat, they can get instant feedback on how balanced weapons and other features are.

"But you have combat in the PU!"

Sure, but to get into combat, you log in, spawn at Area 18, take the elevator, catch the train, go to the terminal, call up a ship...

By the time you got into combat, 15min have passed. Once you get blown up, you are probably not going to spend another 15min doing the same thing.

ToW and Arena Commander get you into the action immediately and with zero repercussions when you die.

I agree with this assumption. Ashes of Creation did the same thing with their battle royal thing. You need constant playing in order to maximize testing and you have to remove all the downtime. The biggest factor that immensely delays combat testing is the death and respawn factor in the PU.

DirectorGunner · Mar 20, 2021

SO...... if this SAVEs CIG money, and for the same provided benefit if they were to commit the hours from in-house.... then.. yea.. sure.. cool... whatever....
they just need to get it done so we have something to do for short bursts. Right now PU is too much of a time sink for my tastes considering the wipes and massive amount of time wrecking bugs.

DirectorGunner · Mar 20, 2021

BUTUZ said:
CIG couldnt meet a deadline if their lives depended on it. That's what you get not having a publisher to give you a deadline ultimatum I guess.

Their ultimatum is our wallets, if they wreck community goodwill (which they have chipped at before numerous times) and the public decides to close their wallets... then they will have no choice to either close shop or wind it in and adjust... or sell out to a publisher or some entity that will take over. I dunno, I have been becoming more critical and pessimistic and untrusting of CIG in the last 2 years than in prior years.

BUTUZ · Mar 20, 2021

DirectorGunner said:
Their ultimatum is our wallets, if they wreck community goodwill (which they have chipped at before numerous times) and the public decides to close their wallets... then they will have no choice to either close shop or wind it in and adjust... or sell out to a publisher or some entity that will take over. I dunno, I have been becoming more critical and pessimistic and untrusting of CIG in the last 2 years than in prior years.

I'm not being funny mate they probably dont care about the backers any more. They could easily wind up CIG tomorrow, sell all the property etc, licence all the amazing technology in each discipline out to literally every other studio in the entire world and walk away billionaires.

Backers telling themselves that it's all gonna be alright, and their 100 dollars really matters are unfortunately deluded. :/

Lorddarthvik · Mar 20, 2021

I think what's happened here is the same that happened to the planet creation being shopped out. They got the tech and most importantly the tools in a good enough state, they want to offload it so they can continue working on squadron. They can't be bothered finishing it cos from now on, it's not a problem that needs solving, it's just grunt work. They are confident enough in their tools that the ilfonic disaster won't happen again.

ToW doesn't matter to a lot of players, like AC doesn't matter now, but, it does give them lots of Data, as stated before me. This is good if they ever really want to finish and balance SC one day, and also gives them a place to introduce new guns and damage types that can be tested instantly.

Also giving out access to their tools and engine gives them two more important things:
-more potential employees get to learn the tools and could hop on over to CiG as already trained professionals!
- if it turns out that this company I never heard of makes a good ToW, it gives more visibility to the engine/tools outside of the SC bubble, for potential licensing later on! It's basically advertisement!

NaffNaffBobFace · Mar 20, 2021

Not sure if I understand why tho?

Didn't CIG have a working build of game mode? My only assumption is having shared the previous work on it they had to refocus hard on S42 but now have PvP peeps wanting for it hard, so they still want to get it out for those guys to play with some time this decade?

Texelis · Mar 20, 2021

NaffNaffBobFace said:
Not sure if I understand why tho?

Didn't CIG have a working build of game mode?

This^^ I get why we need it, I get that a smaller play area pushing people together and harvesting data is important.

What I don't get, is how the company building the game can't build a small arena of their own game and get this mode out. If combining forces with another company is the way they wanted to get this out, then this announcement is 2 years too late.

So they can't do it correctly, and they push it off because they want to save expensive dev time? These expensive devs are so amazing that they couldn't figure out how to get this done, so it's the smart play to save them for bigger and better things? I'm at a loss here.

Cugino83 · Mar 20, 2021

Texelis said:
This^^ I get why we need it, I get that a smaller play area pushing people together and harvesting data is important.

What I don't get, is how the company building the game can't build a small arena of their own game and get this mode out. If combining forces with another company is the way they wanted to get this out, then this announcement is 2 years too late.

So they can't do it correctly, and they push it off because they want to save expensive dev time? These expensive devs are so amazing that they couldn't figure out how to get this done, so it's the smart play to save them for bigger and better things? I'm at a loss here.

As far As I understand of the problems of ToW the blocking issiu is not the creaton of the mission or of the gameplay area itself but the latency of the netcode... so I wonder why this decision...
Netcode is a foundamental part of SC future and I assume it's deeply tied with the rest of the game, if that is the blocking part for the ToW release why externalize the development? Shouldn't its development be keep in-house to allow programmers to work on one of the most important component of the game instead of give it to someone else that will, very likely, not have full access to the SC code?

When CIG assign a Turbolent studio to develope future planet and outpost the benefit ware clear, in this situation I'm still scratchig my head about it...

Radegast74 · Mar 20, 2021

To me this (farming out the work) makes sense in two general cases:

Case 1: all the base tech work is done (i.e., planets/locations, artwork, weapons, etc.) and basic server stuff (i.e., look up these weapon characterstics in this way, here, look up this ships flight characteristics in this way in this other database) and they want/need somebody else to just set up the game bits like signing on, matchmaking, carrying out the actual gameplay, maintaining it, etc.

or

Case 2: CIG wants to release this on PS5 VR (look at what Firesprite has done).

Hmmmm...

Doggen · Mar 20, 2021

here is the intro I guess:

View: https://youtu.be/L_vyrO0NzPU

Looking forward to it regardless. Next up, SC royale!

Firesprite in partnership with CIG to make Theaters of War

Administrator

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Administrator

Administrator

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Administrator

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Space Marshal

Administrator