Star Citizen is the Future of PC Gaming, and it [was] Free to Play this week (Edit: No Longer Free)

You’d think that out of a $400 million budget they could have spared a few bucks for someone with that sort of expertise.

But then you’d have people complaining that the game was “holding your hand” and that payers should “git gud”.

Man, the world has found a less attractive sales pitch for a game than Crusader Kings’ “Just watch these 15 hours of game tutorials on YouTube and you’ll be failing in no time…”

I dunno; I’ve played some games where the Help chat channel within the game was, in fact, the easiest way to learn about the game, as a result not of flaws in the tutorials, but because the game community was just genuinely very helpful.

…Wait. Does Star Citizen actually have in-game global chat including a Help channel, or was the advice to find a veteran player to individually team up with you and show you around in person?

It literally has a page for you to request the services of an in-person guide to individually shepherd you around.

City of Heroes is like that.

Yes, it was in fact CoH I was referring to.

People will complain about anything. Good game design, however, will make it something people want to keep playing.

Generally speaking, tutorials aren’t what makes a game EASY, they’re what make it ACCESSIBLE. World of Warcraft has always been very good at getting you into the game, but the game has changed very dramatically in terms of difficulty; it used to be moderately easy and now it’s preposterously easy, but the tutorial points haven’t really changed much and have nothing to do with the ease of the game. Really complex strategy games like Hearts of Iron have extensive tutorials but they’re still really, really hard. You couldn’t dream of playing games like that without a tutorial.

Agreed with that. City of Heroes was mentioned and I agree that the community was helpful (likely still is but I’m not active in the revival servers) but even when I was starting, I never felt like I was going to catastrophically fail by playing the game. Maybe some aspects weren’t clear or a particular skill choice was a bit of a trap and you’d learn this stuff from the community but you didn’t need someone assigned to you to guide you through how to play the game.

Another new ship.

Well, it has that too. The page I linked to (on the official site) has buttons for “Play”, “Watch”, and “Read”. “Play” (slightly misleading) gets you the instructions on finding a tour guide. But you also have the options of watching 15 hours of videos, or reading endless FAQs on how to operate the elevators.

I was beginning to think there was no recent game-bashing when those videos were released. Turns out there had been, just not in English.

Google translation of headline & subheadline:

Star Citizen: Understand the controversy surrounding the game

Star Citizen is a game that should(should) be revolutionary, but in strange ways the title is more famous for other reasons.

Star Citizen devs get in a little trouble with the UK Advertising Standards Authority over concept ships not in game

The Advertising Standards Authority has told Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games to make it clearer that for sale “concept ships” are not yet available in the game.
[…]
The ASA told Eurogamer that the complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading because it wasn’t sufficiently clear the ship was a concept design that may never materialise.

The ASA assessed and “considered that the fact the ship was a concept product could have been made clearer”, a representative told us.

“On that basis, we issued an Advice Notice advising the advertiser, in future, to ensure that its ads include any material information and significant limitations.”

The ASA issues an Advice Notice where it considers there are potential problems under its advertising rules, but does not consider the issues raised are so significant as to warrant a full formal investigation.

I was reminded of that post upon trying the demo for the early access single-player city-state builder Songs of Syx. There is a tutorial of sorts but mainly it says to look up guides online.

This sort of thing is becoming more common, especially among the ‘early access’ side of gaming, and annoys the hell out of me. I don’t like watching video guides to games, and if a game wants me to do so as part of (or, indeed, the entirety of) the tutorial, I’ll likely move on.

“Hey fellas, this game is REALLY interactive! We like to get the community involved! So how about you create your own guides and support each other?”

“In other words, we do your damn job for you?”

Cloud Imperium Games has held its CitizenCon event - albeit in digital form - and it showed off a number of new features coming to the space game.

However, there was no live gameplay demo and no release dates offered for any part of the controversial, long-in development game.

And Squadron 42, the story-based game set to star Hollywood actors, was a no-show.

CitizenCon failed to deliver a headline-grabbing announcement such as a release date - or even a release window - that CIG is targeting in order to deliver what it considers the “definitive” version of Star Citizen, as Roberts described it in the opening remarks.

Star Citizen’s current roadmap pegs the 3.15 update for release during the third quarter of 2021 - so it’s already late.

And what of Squadron 42? A year ago, in October 2020, Roberts admitted CIG “still have a ways to go” before Squadron 42 even hits beta. Squadron 42 is currently seven years behind its original delivery target.

What happened to Squadron 42 being “in close out mode”?

Are the suckers still buying imaginary ships? Well, there you go. Their existing business model works great, why change it?

This thread is six years old today! :birthday: :partying_face: :partying_face:

And yet defenderofjustice hasn’t answered our questions.