Had one yesterday, time to talk about the sequel.
Not gonna lie, today left a much stronger impression than day 1. I’m one of the weirdos who’s fully onboard with all the sim and on foot stuff so I got a lot of interesting updates. Enough to get my hopes a little. Just a little.
Few notes from the stream:
- really like the frontier fashion as I prefer more modern looking clothing compared to (some of the) futuristic designs we have now
- clothes modularity is an amazing addition, another feature from my childhood dream game will be a thing
- love the hair improvements, one of the things I really waited for
- new character editor looks great, we’ll finally be able to make really distinct characters
- FPS updates seem good, all but ping anyway - not a fan of such mechanic. I’d rather have it tied to a usable device if it has to be in the game rather than just a helmet.
- not fully sold on the slide but I don’t hate it either
- space combat improvements look good, that’s about all of my feelings on that as I’m not particularly interested in this part of the game
- still not sold on master modes, should probably try AC implementation
- I’m really curious how my
brickAurora handles atmo flight in the future - new settlements look pretty impressive, I especially like the homey feeling of independent type tileset
- Pyro presentation made me change my mind about trying out Pyro when it’s out
- mhmmm, yummy slugs
- personal hangars look great
- same with base building even though I’ll most likely stick to a rentable apartment mentioned earlier this year
- I’m not really invested in S42 but I’d be lying if the cinematic didn’t change that a bit
Despite my overall careful curiosity towards the project I’d say it was a pretty good Citzen Con. We got a lot of good updates, some features that seem to be pretty advance development wise which might mean they’ll indeed come to PU within next year and brought back some hope in the progress.
That said I do have one major gripe - for a project that’s suppose to be run as “open development” limiting news through the year and hiding all of this behind S42 anti spoiler policy sucks.
They should either act truthfully and share more meaningful info with us on regular basis or stop pretending this is the “most open development ever” and stick to hoarding all the important stuff for big events. Don’t treat us like the idiots we are.
love the hair improvements, one of the things I really waited for
this is IMO some part of the feature creap of the game that slows the release… In a space game with space ships this is the least important thing… so I was… well not amused about the presentation.
I get where you’re coming from but I feel like there’s a bit of a divide within the community - some want SC to be “space game about space ships” with everything else being unnecessary and some want it to be a immersive sim with all that it entails in and out of your space ship (including CIG).
As for this slowing down the release… Considering they’re still finishing main features of the game (flight mechanics, damage system etc) I don’t think having few people improve hair tech has much effect on release date. Skipping that wouldn’t make those features any more done unfortunately.
Yeah I get the criticism as well and I’m sure it’s frustrating to folks who maybe backed years ago and only care about spaceship stuff. That said, there are other games that focus on spaceship stuff so those are always an option. There’s only one game doing what StarCitizen is doing though.
I’m one of the people who wants the on-foot parts as much as spaceship stuff so those updates were targeted directly at me. I’m starved for fully immersive first person gameplay in general.
At the same time I get the frustration. For years it looked like they focused on side stuff (cloth physics, bartender AI etc) while basics like flight model, damage system etc weren’t even close to being ready which was all you needed to know to realize S42 is nowhere near release.
CIG’s approach wasn’t perfect (and I’m far from being happy with many things) but at the end of the day it does make SC stand out, even in it’s incomplete form.
I was pretty blown away but to be honest I think you have a good level headed take here. It was really tough not to get really caught up in the hype for me as a Kickstarter backer seeing so many things come together.
The stuff I’m most hyped for from the second day is probably Squadron 42 which I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now and it was amazing to see how far they have come. Also funnily enough personal hangars and cargo elevators was probably the next best thing, it feels really tangible and like it would change the whole feel of the PU for me.
EDIT:
Also want to say I totally agree with your comments on open development. For all the community shows I really feel like my biggest complaint over the years is lack of transparency especially when things don’t go to plan for whatever reason. It started all the way back in the radio silence on the FPS module and has happened a few times throughout the project which is really disappointing. Anyway, now that the hurdles have been cleared this should be less of an issue going forward hopefully.
I certainly had to remind myself to be skeptical a few times. Still, these two days brought back some hope and restored quite a bit of good will towards the project.
The open development is even more frustrating since despite the growing number of shows and communication avenues it feels like the amount of meaningful info was getting thinner with every passing year. Let’s hope CIG finally cleared not only the technical hurdle but also psychological one and won’t be as scared to share both good and bad news with us.
I loved what they showed us except the space shitting gameplay. But the VAST majority of what they showed is years out.
And this isn’t the first time they’ve announced SQ42 is feature complete, so I’m not holding my breath with that one.
I’m late to the conversation here but this exactly my sentiment as well. We’re still years from seeing any of the things they showed us actually hit servers that we can play on and experience and then years from them being refined enough to not be a buggy mess that requires wipes every couple patches.
I’m vaguely hopeful that the SQ42 announcement will at least mean a few more resources dedicated to developing for the persistent universe as that’s the gameplay I am more interested in but I am also not holding my breath. Feature complete is a pretty vague state for a studio like CI and without a set in stone release date, it doesn’t mean much of anything.