Razumen wrote on Oct 14, 2018, 02:20:DangerDog wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:37:Razumen wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 08:04:DangerDog wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 05:24:
The demo was live but it was 100% pre-scripted.
All demos are pre-scripted, that doesn't mean anything. And the guy fudges a jump and dies, I'm pretty sure they didn't plan that.
Watched someone playing the Alpha 3.3 PTU on youtube, Didn't look anything like what they showed off in the demo. It's like they added just enough content to make that presentation but nothing more.
So the devs have a more complete version of the game? COLOR ME SCHOCKED!
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 23:08:jdreyer wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 19:42:
Eve and Elite have piracy, and those games are flourishing. Eve also has permadeath, IIRC. Seems like some games have already solved this problem.
Dude, the point is not piracy per se (as I said). The point is being able to STEAL someone's ship that the person might have bought for HUNDREDS OF REAL-LIFE DOLLARS.
You can play a pirate in Elite, yes, but you can not steal ships. You also can not buy ships with real cash in Elite. So there's some big, huge, very major differences.
Also, regardless of the above: It is very much up for debate whether Elite has "solved" the problem since the crime & punishment mechanics in Elite are rather new (it took FDev 3+ years for a first attempt at a "solution"). It is a constant hot topic on the forums and it is actively being discussed in a very controversial manner.
No idea about Eve. I only played a free trial about a decade ago. Permadeath as proposed in SC might work but with all the other complex mechanics it is still going to be a customer service nightmare. People will constantly submit tickets and spam the forums and Reddit for deaths they consider "unfair". Guaranteed to happen.
SC was initially going to be more about the ships but there has definitely been a shift towards a focus on the character as well as character customization and so on.
People are going to get attached to their toons so permadeath is going to be very controversial.
BTW, isn't Eve a game where you are effectively the ship, i.e. you aren't/don't even play a character? The level of attachment would be totally different then. People psychologically get much less attached to things than to characters. Losing a character life in SC probably hurts quite a lot more than losing a ship life in Eve.
DangerDog wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:37:Razumen wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 08:04:DangerDog wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 05:24:
The demo was live but it was 100% pre-scripted.
All demos are pre-scripted, that doesn't mean anything. And the guy fudges a jump and dies, I'm pretty sure they didn't plan that.
Watched someone playing the Alpha 3.3 PTU on youtube, Didn't look anything like what they showed off in the demo. It's like they added just enough content to make that presentation but nothing more.
jdreyer wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 19:42:
Eve and Elite have piracy, and those games are flourishing. Eve also has permadeath, IIRC. Seems like some games have already solved this problem.
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 17:27:It will increase your crimestat, which generates player missions to hunt you down and will spawn NPCs. The game doesn't need 100 security ships - it can just spawn much larger, more powerful ships.
I'll believe it when I see it in practice. As I said, there will be player orgs specializing in ship theft and piracy to piss off other players.
So what is going to happen then if a couple dozen pirates cooperate to steal a nice ship? Is the game going to spawn 100 security ships? No, it won't because that would crash the servers.
Also, people will figure out the AI response/routines in no time. CIG might be able to design mechanics to make the life of a single thief/pirate rather difficult but they won't stand a chance against a collaborating player group.
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 17:27:I too want to see how the system will be built out because, as you point out, it has to be an incredibly complex system just like insurance in real life. It seems like a huge amount of work and will just overcomplicate things. But again, we will see in the final implementation. I imagine the final implementation will be relatively simple - it monitors players that regularly play together and flags up insurance claims where connected players are involved. The occasional offence will be overlooked but regularly insurance fraud will be flagged and invalidated, with an option to appeal at which point a CIG employee can overlook the facts and make a final determination.
You just say "it will be monitored". OK. How? Any such tracking programs would require very complex programming in order to identify suspicious cases in the first place.
They would also require significant (CPU/database) resources to check all insurance claims (there will likely be dozens of thousands of legit claims per 24h period from normal player deaths) in real-time.
Due to the delicacy of the matter, every suspicious case would then require additional manual checking by a CSR to avoid falsely zapping a legit player.
The whole mechanic will also lead to countless reports, complaints, appeals and so on... it will be a complete nightmare for customer service (in addition to the permadeath mechanic which will most likely also spawn thousands of tickets per DAY).
theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 16:03:CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:38:Insurance fraud will be monitored and invalidate lifetime insurance, so few who have spent real world money will be tempted. Why attempt fraud if it could cost you a ship valued up to $2,500? Again it comes down to how the mechanic works and how it is balanced.
As for insurance, this is gonna get complicated real fast because the thieving mechanic could easily be used for insurance fraud if thief and "victim" work together.
CIG will have to invest serious amounts of programming to close all possible loopholes and to program tracking mechanics to discover abuse of the insurance system.
And even then it will likely turn into one of those cat & mouse games where the players will always have an edge by finding new ways to exploit before CIG can patch them.
No, Sir, this idea (which I just picked as an example out of many very retarded proposals by His Cult Leadershipness) is shitty and dumb.
Prez wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 17:26:
Impressive video, no doubt. I just at this point wonder if all these impressive videos are intended to mask the fact that the huge number of game elements, environments, cool scenarios, and mechanics, while really cool unto themselves, are miles away from beimg joined together to be coming a cohesive, complete product. Which could take forever.
theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 16:03:CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:38:It's a risk-to-reward mechanic. In regulated systems piracy will be extremely difficult and stealing ships uncommon, as security forces will hunt down those attempting it. Where it really comes into play is in unregulated systems where there is greater reward but greater risk to accompany it. As with everything, it comes down to the way such a system is ultimately balanced.
The idea of theft mechanics is plain retarded. There are a few taboos in competitive online gaming that you just don't touch. Allowing players to steal other players' property is one such taboo, even more so if the player has paid REAL money for the ownership of the in-game item.
We're not talking minor theft/piracy here like the ability to steal some cargo or credits (which is fine, of course) but we are talking about the ability to steal a frickin' spaceship from another player that might have cost the "poor" guy $500 and is the pride of his fleet.
Insurance or not this is gonna annoy the living fuck out of the victim. Also, from the proposed mechanics it won't be hard at all. If you can really hide in a cargo container to sneak aboard another ship, shoot the unsuspecting guy in the neck while he's piloting (he literally never saw it coming) and grab the ship then that's fairly easy for starters. There's not even a fair fight involved in the theft.
As with any griefing mechanic there will be hordes of players (entire "piracy" player groups) engaging in this kind of "gameplay", fine-tuning and honing their thieving skills to perfection just to annoy the fuck out of other players.
They probably don't even want the ship but just making the online life of a random player miserable is gonna give them a boner.
Insurance fraud will be monitored and invalidate lifetime insurance, so few who have spent real world money will be tempted. Why attempt fraud if it could cost you a ship valued up to $2,500? Again it comes down to how the mechanic works and how it is balanced.
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:38:It's a risk-to-reward mechanic. In regulated systems piracy will be extremely difficult and stealing ships uncommon, as security forces will hunt down those attempting it. Where it really comes into play is in unregulated systems where there is greater reward but greater risk to accompany it. As with everything, it comes down to the way such a system is ultimately balanced.
The idea of theft mechanics is plain retarded. There are a few taboos in competitive online gaming that you just don't touch. Allowing players to steal other players' property is one such taboo, even more so if the player has paid REAL money for the ownership of the in-game item.
We're not talking minor theft/piracy here like the ability to steal some cargo or credits (which is fine, of course) but we are talking about the ability to steal a frickin' spaceship from another player that might have cost the "poor" guy $500 and is the pride of his fleet.
Insurance or not this is gonna annoy the living fuck out of the victim. Also, from the proposed mechanics it won't be hard at all. If you can really hide in a cargo container to sneak aboard another ship, shoot the unsuspecting guy in the neck while he's piloting (he literally never saw it coming) and grab the ship then that's fairly easy for starters. There's not even a fair fight involved in the theft.
As with any griefing mechanic there will be hordes of players (entire "piracy" player groups) engaging in this kind of "gameplay", fine-tuning and honing their thieving skills to perfection just to annoy the fuck out of other players.
They probably don't even want the ship but just making the online life of a random player miserable is gonna give them a boner.
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 15:38:Insurance fraud will be monitored and invalidate lifetime insurance, so few who have spent real world money will be tempted. Why attempt fraud if it could cost you a ship valued up to $2,500? Again it comes down to how the mechanic works and how it is balanced.
As for insurance, this is gonna get complicated real fast because the thieving mechanic could easily be used for insurance fraud if thief and "victim" work together.
CIG will have to invest serious amounts of programming to close all possible loopholes and to program tracking mechanics to discover abuse of the insurance system.
And even then it will likely turn into one of those cat & mouse games where the players will always have an edge by finding new ways to exploit before CIG can patch them.
No, Sir, this idea (which I just picked as an example out of many very retarded proposals by His Cult Leadershipness) is shitty and dumb.
theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 11:46:
Ships have insurance, so it's going to be a minor inconvenience for those who have backed real money for ships. It absolutely is in the intention to allow pirates to steal ships and conceal details but it won't be made easy.
Razumen wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 08:04:DangerDog wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 05:24:
The demo was live but it was 100% pre-scripted.
All demos are pre-scripted, that doesn't mean anything. And the guy fudges a jump and dies, I'm pretty sure they didn't plan that.
Creston wrote on Oct 12, 2018, 22:38:
2) Walking through that city for 30 minutes just to get ready for a mission is going to make everyone so... fucking... bored... This is the age of GIVE IT TO ME NOW, how on earth do they think people are going to want to do this over and over again? At least tell me that your character can actually RUN, and he was just walking so he could show off the level?
Creston wrote on Oct 12, 2018, 22:38:1) Yup, that's a pretty obvious concern. The design goal is that once the building pieces are ready (landing pads, materials, textures, procedural generation routines, etc) that content will be dramatically quicker to put out. That is supported by the speed at which CIG is able to put out ships these days, as they reuse a lot of assets.
I know I'm often snarky and a dick against his game, but that video was very cool (the city part of it anyway) I enjoyed watching it.
I have two major worries though:
1) At this level of detail and the apparent size that they're building it (I thought the train moving through the level was really awesome), it will take them 10000 man years to build 100 star systems worth of content. They have, what, 500 people? So expect this to launch by 2038...
2) Walking through that city for 30 minutes just to get ready for a mission is going to make everyone so... fucking... bored... This is the age of GIVE IT TO ME NOW, how on earth do they think people are going to want to do this over and over again? At least tell me that your character can actually RUN, and he was just walking so he could show off the level?
And a minor worry: If your UI and your underlying systems are so complicated that even your devs themselves don't know how it all works, that's a clear sign that it's WAY too complicated.
Still, the city was cool. I honestly wanted to play that as they were walking through it. I only wanted to play it once, but I did at least want to play it.
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 10:03:Ships have insurance, so it's going to be a minor inconvenience for those who have backed real money for ships. It absolutely is in the intention to allow pirates to steal ships and conceal details but it won't be made easy. As for multiplayer, NOBODY has experience developing a game of this scope and fidelity because it hasn't been done before. It's hardly a surprise that it is taking a long time to develop.
^ +1 to all of this
Chris Roberts' incompetence is exacerbated by the fact that he has zero experience developing multiplayer games which has painfully shown throughout the development of SC again and again.
Some of the proposals are completely ludicrous and show a gross misunderstanding of online communities in general, e.g. the "great" idea that you are supposed to be able to steal other people's spaceships in the final game (you know, the ship they paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars for). That's gonna work out really well...
CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2018, 10:03:Squadron 42 is being developed by the UK studio which is run by his brother Erin Roberts, who has a proven track record shipping games. Star Citizen is the more ambitious part of the project but people have backed Chris Roberts' vision. As always, people should wait for the final product and check out the reviews before making any purchase. Backing now is only for people willing to take a risk and support a groundbreaking project.
He should have passed on the project lead of Star Citizen (the MMO) to someone with years of online gaming experience early on while joining forces with Erin for Squadron 42.
On SC, he should have relegated himself to an elevated consultant/supervisory role with a veto right (first word on high level decisions and last word on really important controversial issues) but left the day to day stuff and the scheduling to someone competent in this area.