Nice letter. Very down to earth in some regards, and upbeat which we need at this point.
Buuuuut....
It's a huge mistake to interpret CR's letter as SQ42 being close to anything playable. He says: " I can tell you that the team is in “close out” mode and we are actively looking to burn down our remaining tasks and focus on polishing gameplay. " Yeah, that will take YEARS to get there mate. Here's why:
- CR says they keep adding stuff and improving SQ42 cos PU gets better stuff all the time... Also according to CR, adding and improving the PU will never stop. Soooo, SQ42 never2?
- But wait a sec, 90% of the stuff we get in PU fixes are either not part of a single player war campaign (I don't expect to be doing multiple box runs in SQ42), or can be cheated with good old fashioned scripting (you could just script stuff like the new weather systems on planets that blows the waves in the sea ffs...). So what's holding them back? Did they program themselves into a corner where they can no longer script and pre-bake stuff, and have to integrate whole working systems from the PU branch? That would be really really bad.
-What does SQ42 need to function: The story we have, the acting was shot ages ago, the graphics fidelity and effects we had back years ago was perfectly good enough, the assets (ships, guns...) are done or getting ready, the missions are probably designed and mostly done (cos script and filming are done so you can't deviate that much).
What else is left? Oh right, AI, which is GARBAGE, and Flight Model, which is also mostly GARBAGE! It needs tons and tons of work still! So, how the hell do they plan to close out and test something that doesn't fucking exist??
-SQ42 is being built separately, so whenever some new tech drops for PU it also needs to get into SQ42. Great, but this means they do the work twice, and one side will always be behind, and according to CR, it's SQ42. How could this change for the better? By adding more devs to SQ42. I don't see any mention of moving resources to SQ42 to finish it up. So the cycle will not end for quiet a while yet.
With that said, I do still hold the belief that it will be worth the wait.
My very optimistic bet is Christmas 2022 at best for SQ42.
Beta for PU also, maybe, but at this rate we may be looking at an initial "full" release of around 2025 ish.... still soooo many unknowns, so much stuff to be done.
TLDR of my interpretation.: CR is playing "catch up" with SQ42, and they are losing. We have no working Ai, Flight/Combat is jousty trash still, and instead of fixing those asap, they keep integrating the new planet tech and such unnecessary things into SQ42, cos otherwise it gets more and more dated by every quarter. Lots of work ahead, don't expect anything for a couple more years.
PS.: There are only 3 events I always want to watch live every year, or at least try to. That's N24H (9.5 hours red flagged cos rain), Le Mans 24H (missed it cos RL), and Citizen CON. So I was very sad that we don't get at least a virtual CitCon.
I'm also very disappointed that we don't even get a recording from Chris addressing us, the wallets backers, at least reading out his letter or something. He could've done a livestream of him speaking to us from his home for 10 minutes... Apperently, we aren't even worthy of that anymore.
"Just some blue wall of text for you this year, now sod off you walking wallets... oh, but do leave your credit cards on the table, thanks bye!"
