Citizencon 2017 - Pros & Cons

[Bigcracker]

After a days of rest and the hype train is back on track, we can start to day dream plans for future adventures and of our first Testie colony named "Montoya Town" or an asteroid mining facility named after the Rock Raiders. Citizencon 2017 was leaps and bounds better than 2016 imo but with everything it wasn't perfect. So give me your 1-2 biggest Pro's and Con's of what you took away from Citcon 2017, and I made a poll just because.

Pro's
1. The devs tools are amazing! They can in minutes build entire cities,wastelands or mining worlds.
2. The building blocks of content is starting to show up (Trade,Claim land,Protect Land, Attack others Land, and build an empire)

Con's
1. Possible p2w talks, for every ship you need,you can have available at your disposable day 1. Orgs will be able to plant their flag on the planet/asteroid of their choosing day 1 and start pulling in income and resources off a planet or asteroid that your standard $45 package can not do. How does this offset? Well CR said he wants 90% NPC to 10% humans and if SC is as big as he says it shouldn't be a problem. But the big problem is the Raven, as CR put it "it'sthe fastest fighter in the verse" and as the intel guy put it "Only available with a $400 SSD."

To me that is unacceptable if true and should be available in-game via credits as you have a sabre-warlock that you can also sell in-game as you will have LTI. But time will tell.


Citizencon 8.5 out of 10 for me, I am going to go learn how to order booze in Xi'an now.

 

[AntiSqueaker]

I'm just slightly disappointed we still haven't seen a SQ42 trailer, or that vertical slice we were promised "was days from completition" last year.

It's frankly a bit worrying that either they don't want to show off the vertical slice they were allegedly so proud of and were so disappointed it wasn't ready, or being more pessimistic, it's simply not done yet.

You wanna get new people on board? Show a 2-3 minute trailer of a Bengal or Idris flying by, some dogfighting, and some awesome maps we haven't seen yet. Put some Gary Oldman or Mark Hamill voice-overs about blah blah blah vanduul threat blah blah save humanity blah blah, and boom you have a LOT of people who have been on the fence about SC or not paying attention suddenly paying attention.

But what do I know- SQ42 was supposed to be released 2 years ago

 

[Crymsan]

Okay so firstly kudos for lack of re doing half the presentation or terrible acting.

The negative well quite frankly the main presentation could have easily been an episode of ATV. So they have more planet tech tools and here is an hour of the same stuff. I didnt think the city looked that great it wasnt a wow moment. Its okay. So its been a year and they have added some buildings!

 

[Radegast74]

After a days of rest and the hype train is back on track.

Hey, it ain't "hype" if it is real! What he was showing us may not be in our hands/my grubby paws right now, but it is coming!

But the big problem is the Raven, as CR put it "it's the fastest fighter in the verse" and as the intel guy put it "Only available with a $400 SSD."

To me that is unacceptable if true and should be available in-game via credits as you have a sabre-warlock that you can also sell in-game as you will have LTI. But time will tell..

Agreed, aspects of this bother me. Right now, according to the (notoriously unreliable) ship stats, it clocks in at the same speed as a regular Sabre, and only has 2 month insurance...no LTI. So, a lot of what has been said about it appears to be just marketing hype.

However, if CR is able to give a little, and get something in return from Intel, this may work out to all our advantage. Certainly, if they can get free/reduced cost drives from Intel that help them to compile and re-compile much faster after bug fixes, we all do benefit from that.

Honestly, the cost of the drive doesn't bug me...it isn't that far out of line for PCIe drives, esp. when you factor in a "free" ship and SC game code. However, long ago I decided to abandon the bleeding edge...somebody else can "enjoy" getting first gen stuff now.

 

[CosmicTrader]

Pro - It is Star Citizen
Con -

 

[Bigcracker]

Hey, it ain't "hype" if it is real! What he was showing us may not be in our hands/my grubby paws right now, but it is coming!


Agreed, aspects of this bother me. Right now, according to the (notoriously unreliable) ship stats, it clocks in at the same speed as a regular Sabre, and only has 2 month insurance...no LTI. So, a lot of what has been said about it appears to be just marketing hype.

However, if CR is able to give a little, and get something in return from Intel, this may work out to all our advantage. Certainly, if they can get free/reduced cost drives from Intel that help them to compile and re-compile much faster after bug fixes, we all do benefit from that.

Honestly, the cost of the drive doesn't bug me...it isn't that far out of line for PCIe drives, esp. when you factor in a "free" ship and SC game code. However, long ago I decided to abandon the bleeding edge...somebody else can "enjoy" getting first gen stuff now.

The entire Raven thing leaves a lot of question to be answered and hopefully we get a Q&A soon with them.

 

[Black Sunder]

I wanted to see some Mining.

Other than that I thought the Pioneer presentation was the best part of it all.

 

[maynard]

what I'm happy about:

the building blocks are now in place to flesh out the 'verse quickly
all the pieces are coming together for a robust player driven economy
working multi-crew ships, and fleet combat

what's still missing:

game mechanics and motivations for inter-org wars
I want to fight other players in epic battles, for the glory of Dear Leader and TEST
what will be the conflict driver? how will we measure e-peen?

 

[Vavrik]

I voted indifferent, but it's because I alternated between drunken joy, and seen better in terms of a conference. There were some jaw dropper moments, but there were also some serious eye roller moments for me.

The biggest thing they said during the conference for me, wasn't the Pioneer though that was cool, and wasn't the Intel/Raven Saber deal though I do need a faster drive, and I wouldn't mind a Saber. The biggest thing that they said for me was a quarterly release model. They need that badly. Quite honestly, they should have been doing that all along, and quarterly is probably the best frequency.

The biggest eye roller moments for me come whenever they use the term "Newtonian physics", or try to explain their physics model in terms of Newtonian Physics. It's not. At 150Km or so above a planet, you'd feel something more than 90% of the planetary gravity unless you were moving horizontally at orbital velocity. That space station is obviously stationary or moving very slowly, so it ought to have gigantic thrusters holding it up. To stand on the platform, you wouldn't need artificial gravity, you could just stand there. Jump off, you wouldn't float , you'd fall like a rock.

 

[supitza]

I'm just slightly disappointed we still haven't seen a SQ42 trailer, or that vertical slice we were promised "was days from completition" last year.

They announced about a week ago that the Anniversary Live Stream will be on the S42 vertical slice. So it's coming. Maybe they thought it was more important to show other stuff first.

The biggest thing that they said for me was a quarterly release model. They need that badly. Quite honestly, they should have been doing that all along, and quarterly is probably the best frequency.

Until the delta patcher was live and operational, it would've been a lot harder for them to push big patches often. But I think they also realized that hardly anybody was still playing 2.6 after 8 months.

--------------------------------
For me, CitCon was this:

Pros:
- Dev tech was nice. It's good to know that they can create and populate a whole planet with just a few clicks.
- Loved that the Aurora was the ship of choice for the demo.
- The Intel partnership is a pro for me. I don't care about their SSD, I'm not going to buy it or the Raven (because I'm poor). Yes, the Samsung one is better and $100 cheaper, but what's the Sabre Raven worth to you?). I'm just happy that Intel took an interest in the project and offered to pay for the event.
- The Pioneer is nice and I can see how it opens up a lot of gameplay potential. Can't wait to see how it will work in game. Maybe we can build a TEST Homebase Megastructure? With blackjack and hookers?

Cons:
- Some of the panels didn't interest me at all. I know CitCon is for people that are already backers, but it's a wasted opportunity to bring new people to the project if you talk about graphics rendering for 1 hour.
- Linguistics seemed a bit too... geek for me. I know most people loved it, so there's that. Maybe it's just me getting old and grumpy.
- The demo fell a bit short for me. What actually happened was they took off from a landing pad, landed on a pseudo-Olisar (they didn't even go through the door), quantum-leaped to another planet, landed and flew a Nox for a bit.
Using the Aurora CL would have been a great opportunity to pick up a crate of cargo from the truck stop and sell it on Hurston. The tech for that already exists. "We showed you how we procedurally create a planet, now for the demo we're going to fly over it. There, done."

So, my overall impression of CitCon:

 

[Takeiteasy]

I saw a pre-order price for the 280gb drive and it was £612... I simply can't afford that, so this ship is no longer even obtainable to me. It's just an expensive SSD which a M.2 drive can do more less cost and more storage.

I guess the biggest thing here is CIG got free drives to improve the game and Intel got a promotion for their new line of drives.

It's only a Sabre any way, maybe we can kit out a Sabre just the same instead of getting this one.

 

[Printimus]

I thought the keypoint presentation was pretty cool.

 

[Toihva]

I saw a pre-order price for the 280gb drive and it was £612... I simply can't afford that, so this ship is no longer even obtainable to me. It's just an expensive SSD which a M.2 drive can do more less cost and more storage.

Actually, from testing it seems that the Optane is better. Same performance if drive is full or empty, no real need for trim. Biggest thing is the que, when they do the sequential read/write it may be about the same, thing is with the Optane, from testing, you can throw in read or a write in the sequential testing and it doesn't skip a beat.

 

[Han Burgundy]

I think nothing will satisfy me at this point but a live 3.0 release. It was 'Nifty', but didn't get my blood boiling or anything.

 

[DirectorGunner]

I loved it, here's me expressing what I thought about it

 

[Shinlen]

I loved it, here's me expressing what I thought about it

Amazing

 

[Radegast74]

I loved it, here's me expressing what I thought about it

Nice!
You should also do a "Then to Now" of all the games Derek Smart has put out during the same time period. LOL!

 

[Joehockey]

After a days of rest and the hype train is back on track, we can start to day dream plans for future adventures and of our first Testie colony named "Montoya Town" or an asteroid mining facility named after the Rock Raiders. Citizencon 2017 was leaps and bounds better than 2016 imo but with everything it wasn't perfect. So give me your 1-2 biggest Pro's and Con's of what you took away from Citcon 2017, and I made a poll just because.

Pro's
1. The devs tools are amazing! They can in minutes build entire cities,wastelands or mining worlds.
2. The building blocks of content is starting to show up (Trade,Claim land,Protect Land, Attack others Land, and build an empire)

Con's
1. Possible p2w talks, for every ship you need,you can have available at your disposable day 1. Orgs will be able to plant their flag on the planet/asteroid of their choosing day 1 and start pulling in income and resources off a planet or asteroid that your standard $45 package can not do. How does this offset? Well CR said he wants 90% NPC to 10% humans and if SC is as big as he says it shouldn't be a problem. But the big problem is the Raven, as CR put it "it'sthe fastest fighter in the verse" and as the intel guy put it "Only available with a $400 SSD."

To me that is unacceptable if true and should be available in-game via credits as you have a sabre-warlock that you can also sell in-game as you will have LTI. But time will tell.


Citizencon 8.5 out of 10 for me, I am going to go learn how to order booze in Xi'an now.

I don't even think your Cons are really Cons IMO. It's free to join an org. There is literally nothing stopping anyone from joining the larger public orgs that have loads of ships. Hell, I don't even have a lot of ships but if a TESTie was looking for some helping building money or wanted to use my ship while I was busy doing something else in the game then go for it. But you can't really say it's p2w if players can join big orgs for free. If a player really does think that the game is p2w then they could flat out join Test. Make loads of money off of the players in the org that have loads of ships or off of the resources on our planet in a couple weeks and then leave Test to go on their merry way. But just because you can buy the ship and have it on Day 1 doesn't mean that you will be able to afford the fees to use it Day 1

Fees: (in reference to the Pioneer)
1. The cost of finding (large exploration expedition) a new planet OR the price of a UEE land plot.
2. The cost of filling the ship with the minimum number of AI or Players (maybe if you have a cool org we'd crew the ship for free)
3. The fuel to get the Pioneer to the destination.

I really don't think anyone will be able to outright afford to make such a endeavor right out of the box on Day 1. I think there will be a few weeks where everyone in larger orgs are pooling their money up to afford to do such an expedition. So sure, after all the effort that goes towards it is EASIER and FASTER to do it with ships you bought with real money before release. But, it can all be done in game.

 

[Shinlen]

I don't even think your Cons are really Cons IMO. It's free to join an org. There is literally nothing stopping anyone from joining the larger public orgs that have loads of ships. Hell, I don't even have a lot of ships but if a TESTie was looking for some helping building money or wanted to use my ship while I was busy doing something else in the game then go for it. But you can't really say it's p2w if players can join big orgs for free. If a player really does think that the game is p2w then they could flat out join Test. Make loads of money off of the players in the org that have loads of ships or off of the resources on our planet in a couple weeks and then leave Test to go on their merry way. But just because you can buy the ship and have it on Day 1 doesn't mean that you will be able to afford the fees to use it Day 1

Fees: (in reference to the Pioneer)
1. The cost of finding (large exploration expedition) a new planet OR the price of a UEE land plot.
2. The cost of filling the ship with the minimum number of AI or Players (maybe if you have a cool org we'd crew the ship for free)
3. The fuel to get the Pioneer to the destination.

I really don't think anyone will be able to outright afford to make such a endeavor right out of the box on Day 1. I think there will be a few weeks where everyone in larger orgs are pooling their money up to afford to do such an expedition. So sure, after all the effort that goes towards it is EASIER and FASTER to do it with ships you bought with real money before release. But, it can all be done in game.

Well said, I would add outpost maintenance fee to that. And I think that solo "p2w' players may find they posts overrun or robbed if they try to do it on day 1 alone.

 

[hardroc77]

I wanted to see some Mining.

Other than that I thought the Pioneer presentation was the best part of it all.

Yeah me too. And agreed on the Pioneer presentation. That calmed my buyers remorse.

for the glory of Dear Leader and TEST
what will be the conflict driver?

Simple, they're not one of us.

I loved it, here's me expressing what I thought about it

Well done. A great compilation.

I don't even think your Cons are really Cons IMO. It's free to join an org. There is literally nothing stopping anyone from joining the larger public orgs that have loads of ships. Hell, I don't even have a lot of ships but if a TESTie was looking for some helping building money or wanted to use my ship while I was busy doing something else in the game then go for it. But you can't really say it's p2w if players can join big orgs for free. If a player really does think that the game is p2w then they could flat out join Test. Make loads of money off of the players in the org that have loads of ships or off of the resources on our planet in a couple weeks and then leave Test to go on their merry way. But just because you can buy the ship and have it on Day 1 doesn't mean that you will be able to afford the fees to use it Day 1

Fees: (in reference to the Pioneer)
1. The cost of finding (large exploration expedition) a new planet OR the price of a UEE land plot.
2. The cost of filling the ship with the minimum number of AI or Players (maybe if you have a cool org we'd crew the ship for free)
3. The fuel to get the Pioneer to the destination.

I really don't think anyone will be able to outright afford to make such a endeavor right out of the box on Day 1. I think there will be a few weeks where everyone in larger orgs are pooling their money up to afford to do such an expedition. So sure, after all the effort that goes towards it is EASIER and FASTER to do it with ships you bought with real money before release. But, it can all be done in game.

Damn it. Do have to be so logical?