I've Covered Star Citizen For 4 Years | This Is What They Don't Tell You

this video is sponsored in part by my supporters for exclusive videos referrals and more check out patreon down below I began covering Star Citizen in some form back in 2018. I started out making retrospective videos which reviewed the weekly shows from a year prior to determine if any progress was actually being made with Star Citizen but I was not ready for just how deep that would get over the next few years by the way please don't go watch those videos please that was almost five years ago now since then I've gone through the usual cycle of Rapid interest in the game predictions that ended up being true 10 of the time constant disappointments from the other 90 percent some hype further disappointment and finally leveled out into a calm but collected understanding mostly game development is hard building companies is hard and pleasing the masses is hard trying to do all three of these things at the same time on a global scale from zero relatively speaking probably shouldn't be attempted but here we are and I've been covering it virtually every day of every week of the last four years and I think it's given me a good amount of clarity on the project and company building it that I'd like to share with you this video will be a bit different it'll be more of a candid presentations of these things I've learned over the last few years both good and bad as well as how I'm feeling about it all many of you have already come to these conclusions but hopefully I can add some more context if you'd like to support this work my family and future content consider subscribing or joining on patreon for more exclusive videos like this and thank you for coming to my tomato talk oh Star Citizen has a way of showing you the potential without actually quite reaching it this is largely due to the incomplete nature of the engine a lot of the more amazing features in the game would be much more useful the details more meaningful and the experience more consistent if the engine was complete stability networking hell even VoIP would all provide a better experience but that's not all there is to it being a game with open development comes with its problems and its perks I've never seen a game developer share more about its product and development than cig interestingly that's not to say it's completely open while they give us a lot of info and ever-changing roadmap sharing the following patch a Gantt chart showing the features still to be made monthly reports of news from around all five Studios and two weekly shows that share the latest development and discussion for most weeks throughout the year they're still quite selective with what they tell us that being said this open communication gives us a lot of face time with developers developers who are just as passionate and excited about a game like this as we are who are sometimes shaking with the chance to talk about their work work that may or may not make it into a feature launch you get where I'm going with this a lot can be said offhand in a situation like this that's taken as fact or promise and that's where your problems start to come in these problems can be small like the slip of a new vehicle being worked on but not yet revealed and I think we're moving on to the X1 after that yeah so hopefully that comes out hopefully I don't know maybe it's it's up in the air we'll see or many many release dates for major patches and features that continue to be missed in the latter case it becomes old rather quickly things like the briefing room in 2020 or the road to 4.0 in 2023 also highlight an inconsistency with messaging when only a single or few episodes of an episodic update series are published with no follow-up or additional information these things become frustrating for the players and aren't really something you have to deal with too often with game companies most game companies would show off a vertical slice demo some edited Showcase of gameplay and a few trailers all checked over relentlessly to make sure they don't show any mistakes seeing the actual development of assets behaviors features and locales from concept all the way to in-game gets players hyped and acts as its own form of marketing but oftentimes a feature needs to be put aside for a while and players are never informed this leads to many believing features have just been removed from the plan entirely in some cases such as with the icache system that's exactly what happens and players are made to wait until a solution is discovered before the news is shared [Music] the communication surrounding this project is the best and worst part of it over my four years covering the game it has gotten better in some areas and worse in others and while I appreciate the devs excitement and their willingness to share things with us as well as the company's openness with these different types of videos and updates a big part of the communication is both the consistency following up on those things and clarifications when those things don't turn out in due time in the name of open development but if you haven't noticed there is one thing that has always remained the same throughout all of this communication since I started covering the game optimism soon is not just a word with this game it's a philosophy delays with Star Citizen are second nature back in 2022 the company finally decided it was not accurate enough to predict four quarters of progress in the future so they scaled the roadmap to only show one quarter ahead and even then it's been a bit iffy when you're looking to get into Star Citizen you need to be ready for feature delays and missed deadlines yes game development is hard the code is ever changing and software is unpredictable but this is also a company of 1 000 plus people that's a lot of places for things to break down a sick kid at home a better job offer elsewhere world events there are plenty of reasons for problems to compound and with Star Citizen it'll save plenty of disappointment keeping that in mind as a quick example the Banu merchantment is a ship people have been excited for for years and while it looked like it was headed into the game last year it turns out the developers working on it had other opportunities for work and the ship had to be shelved much to the community Chagrin in the same vein the whole sea is coming out in Alpha 3.20 this year but we were seeing it in engine all the way back in 2018 because the work to be done on the ship might have been complete but the more advanced physics Tech and the cargo refactor needed to also be in the game for the ship to function correctly so while the ship might have seemed ready four years ago it's only just getting added now we've been waiting more than three years for the Pyro system to enter the game with 4.0 constantly being held back by the addition of server meshing the why of this is a long story I recently covered on my second Channel but the fact of it remains sometimes the messaging and the reality don't match up the optimism hype and high expectations can take over before the devs truly know if the tech even works and this is likely the most painful part of following this game take PES for example the game changing item database tracking system it took years to get this system working and last May it was finally announced to be functioning in a closed environment three to six months was likely needed to get it tested and into our hands but the reality was we wouldn't see the system launch in-game until March of the next year at which point it broke the game for weeks it was expected to be difficult but game development proves itself unpredictable and everything depends on everything crushing ships and grinding them up into materials for crafting purposes depends on damage Maps ship status tracking and commodity tracking to work these things depend on PES which is why we are only seeing their development now features like Salvage the cargo refactor and other things all saw delays because PES saw delays and every other addition down the line or in a parallel Sprint of development can also be delayed because of that moving developers from one team to another causes holes that might not get plugged considering a game with all these features trying to be developed at the same time that can get bad which brings me to one of the biggest things I've realized over these four years I used to think this game was a crazy idea as a kid I always wondered to myself why don't games just write rules for the world and see what happens when they run I didn't know what simulators were at the time so excuse me but atmosphere gravity AI resources I wanted to see them run naturally a bit similar to how Bethesda games work actually Star Citizen seems to take that approach in many areas it's meant to be a free-form Sandbox that aims to just let you live in space and that is crazy I just didn't realize how much this is the most ambitious game ever made I don't think I've ever actually said that because I don't know every game ever made how could I but Niche games don't take big budgets it simply doesn't work you need to be able to Market to enough people to make the money back and then some and the risk is always high the less mainstream your game is but what if that Niche Community could provide a big budget it would make sense that the most successfully crowdfunded game in history also ends up being the most ambitious a lot of that ambition came after the realization of that budget and how much people wanted to see it realized For Better or Worse let's run through just the most basic explanations of some of star citizens planned professions cargo hauling where you can deliver small valuables large bulk sales and anything in between on a multitude of dozens of spaceships you can do this between space stations outposts underground facilities or cities you can bring a friend with you or you could run in a convoy with multiple ships targeting specific Commodities or taking whatever is selling well for that day bringing a combat escorter or relying on turret Gunners or screw the hauling you can just buy the ships purchase the cargo and then pay others to deliver it for you staying out of danger and maybe enjoying your time playing other quests how about salvaging where you can scrape the hull off the outside of a ship to sell as a general purpose good or you can crunch a ship up into small blocks of the assorted materials that it's made out of and sell those goods to refineries and factories or use them for crafting or you can siphon out the oxygen and fuel from a ship that kept it running when players were using it but the most valuable form will always be removing the weapons and internal components that kept the ship alive the power supply Shield modules gravity components and life support devices that those captains of those ships spent money on to make sure that they are running a Tip-Top shape that's now your Salvage to sell or use in your own ships and these same items are used in engineering a profession that allows players to tune their ships to run specific ways keep components running so that a ship continues on its Mission and maintain the power Network balancing the power draw of turrets Shields thrusters and life support which also keeps the people on board alive based on the capacity that is available to each ship that's three different options there's also mining combat piloting FPS combat medical gameplay hacking Base building farming data management exploration and Refinery gameplay it's a bit of a bloated mess but it's also extremely exciting I've watched the developments of some of these systems play out and it can be Bittersweet we can see the interactions between these systems forming FPS and ship combat are beginning to intertwine medical can be relegated to all members or a dedicated Medic in many combat situations mining refining and cargo hauling are creating a full game Loop and Engineering is showing signs of its presence in cities outposts and space stations the work is coming along especially over the last two years but it is often a very basic implementation for the sake of an alpha that doesn't progress much further see the game right now is not the game we'll be playing so most features aren't being made for the game right now this can get very annoying for players who just want to have some fun and enjoy the features we have but it sometimes feel like the game doesn't even want to be enjoyed we recently talked about bugs glitches and the problems with Star Citizen that don't get fixed so I won't put you through that again it's in the relevant links below if you need it but features don't get fixed or completed because they just need to be built enough for players to test them and confirm the fundamentals work with the game look at ship docking which has only been applied to a couple of ships despite so many having docking ports yes it works in the game and you might need it but because they just needed to get it working in some way your ship might not actually allow you to dock with the nearby space station or how about ship names which many of you may not have realized is a thing only available on some ships because well the technology needed to be there to connect the player's input to the name that shows up on their ship but it's not a requirement for the game we're playing right now physical components allow some ships to provide additional Salvage to you like we mentioned earlier but not the less updated ships just yet they still need to be brought up to the gold standard and the star map gets you where you need to go but definitely doesn't provide the quality of life you'd expect when navigating across a star system and needing to search for your destination these are all examples of game systems that have either remained in Legacy form or are underdeveloped because there's simply more work to do on them in the future and yes I know with all of this talk starts to come up feature creep but looking back over the history of this developments what's been said about the game and the plans made most of this is stuff that was planned they're just now getting to the hard part of actually implementing it into the game and luckily enough for us as I've been covering the game they haven't really tried to introduce new mechanics that much what does end up happening is old mechanics expand in scope as they are tied in with other features so there is still a bit of a problem there and that problem remains ever persistent as all of this work needs to keep being done to reach feature complete so that we can move on to Beta phase this is a long and drawn out process it's going nowhere quick and there's plenty of work to be done yet I would keep an eye on the developments after 4.0 4.1 and 4.2 and Squadron 42 but for now things I think are going to continue slow and steady so keep in mind these quirks around communication the lack thereof and the resulting expectations that come from it Star Citizen is a wild ride to follow you never know what's going to happen and there's still a lot to do there's so much potential with Star Citizen you can see it everywhere you look but frustratingly it's going to take a while to fully realize we haven't even talked about the entirely separate single-player space military story being developed at the same time that's actually what takes up most of the development effort and so also slows down Star Citizen But ultimately this combination of open communication a game engine that takes so much effort to build the complexity of the game and the excitement and optimism that surrounds it leads to heightened expectations and frustrations and features and timelines what they're doing is truly unique difficult to replicate overly ambitious and a bit of a roller coaster I don't think anybody can say specifically what this game will end up being outside of those building it nor can anybody apply a reasonable timeline there's no doubt in my mind Star Citizen will become an incredibly interesting experience for those who like space sims but it will continue to be a slow and frustrating crawl for the foreseeable future and it may not be everything we want it to be or even everything they've said it will be it's a moonshot project and we're all really just along for the ride there's a lot to take in about this game like I said there's nothing else really like it you don't get to watch Star Wars eclipse or Elder Scrolls 6 go through their Growing Pains as the fundamentals of the game are figured out you don't get to see every no man's Sky update under construction and in players hands before the official release but when those things are available to you you'll also be able to play them as pretty smooth experiences mostly I guess that's becoming less true with even the biggest game releases but you get my point [Music] Star Citizen is not for everyone even in its final form it won't be but right now most people should not be playing it I tell people every single week on my stream to stop playing the game because for some people it is too slow frustrating and oftentimes broken many are here for what the game will become it doesn't mean that you need to play it constantly until then if it causes you frustration and that's my main message after four years of covering this game beyond the hype tempering expectations fun gameplay informative panel shows conventions annoying marketing the most important thing is your own enjoyment if the game is frustrating you taking too long or just not what you're interested in at the moment play the other great games on the market check in occasionally here on YouTube to get the latest the game's not going anywhere [Music] thank you for sticking around for the entirety of this video this was a long one and a bit rambly I'm not gonna lie but after so long of covering the game I wanted to talk a bit more candidly about my feelings I appreciate you listening and as a sign of that appreciation we'll drop you a secret code here for my ongoing August ship giveaway enter below and consider subscribing to the channel for more space game News videos and updates I'll be covering favorites like Star Citizen and Starfield as well as future titles like Star Wars Outlaws on this channel my second Channel my podcasts and my live streams and if you really want to get into discussion or play with the group jump on our Discord or join our Star Citizen org below finally if you want more in-depth videos like this every month you can become a supporter on patreon for monthly exclusives behind the scene updates and your referral code in our own randomizer I really hope you were able to learn something new from this video thank you again for watching and I'll catch you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Space Tomato

Views: 152,122

Keywords: star citizen 2023, star citizen history, star citizen review, what is star citizen, star citizen news, star citizen opinion, star citizen space tomato, space tomato, tomato talks, star citizen future, star citizen release, star citizen development, development news, gamedev, crowdfunding, star citizen success, star citizen cost, star citizen scam

Id: 5OLFf0AZbOo

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023