As bug ridden and feature incomplete as Star Citizen is right now, I really can’t deny how beautifully detailed the ships and cities are. It is actually quite difficult to ignore.
I don’t know, they don’t seem much better than Elite Dangerous, which is a game that’s released. And those ships don’t take a real life mortgage to afford.
You have the option to buy most ships with real money, but the general cycle is about 6 months after release into the persistent universe the ships are purchasable with in-game money. The only reason to spend real money on SC is if you can’t wait those 6 months, want to support development, or don’t want to bother with in-game money for whatever reason. There are some exception ships though.
As for the detail, there are big differences between SC and ED. For one, SC ships have completely modeled interiors since the intended gameplay is for you to manually board your ship from outside. ED has no ship interiors as far as I know, just cockpits and exteriors, no matter how big the ship is. SC also has more ships than ED even excluding all the SC ship variants, ground vehicles, and ships that don’t do Quantum jumps, the frame shift equivalent of ED.
It’s easy to ignore actually. Where game? I don’t care how pretty your tech demo is. Where game?
I was playing the game/tech demo yesterday. It seems to be there and I was having a lot of fun.
Oh it’s not one tech demo, it’s several. They aren’t connected. If they aren’t connected it isn’t a game. People just don’t want to admit they were scammed when they “bought” that fancy ship in that “game”.
To put it to perspective Star Citizen’s Kickstarter started on 2012. GTA 5 released on 2013, and GTA 6 is supposed to be out in 2025. If it doesn’t get delayed too significantly we will get 2 full GTA games before SC is released.
To be fair, CIG is also developing 2 games at once in SC and Squadron 42, the latter of which will actually be released first. The reasons for this are a whole other thing though.
To be fair, Rockstar also released RDR2 between the two GTA games.
True, I forgot about this.
They literally built their engine from scratch. How much do you all think that costs? Wasn’t Starfields improved engine like 8 years and $1bn in the making?
And look at THAT game.
When 4.0 releases I am sure it will be solid. The game as it is right now is visually amazing. It’s a dream to be able to take your ship from port to planet. Mining is enjoyable. Pirating is fun. Flying is great, combat is cool. Spacewalking is cool, and also salvage. It’s just like being in space as I would imagine it.
It’s not finished for sure but I can see where it’s going and I like it.
I contest The idea that it takes 700mil or 1bil to make a game engine.
I’m not saying I can do it. I’m saying a competent team does not need that.
GTA 5 used an in-house engine (used previously, sure, but StarEngine is also modified from a pre-existing engine). The combined development and marketing budget is US$265 million. Development started in 2008 and released in 2013.
Cyberpunk 2077 also used an in-house engine, budget (not sure if marketing is included or not) is US$316 million. Development started in 2012 and released in 2020.
And I contend that’s bloated by corporate bullshit.
The biggest cult/scam in gaming.
