Top 5 reasons they call Star Citizen a scam, and why they are wrong

Babuinix

Montoya with some great points in this video



Clarifying some of the usual misconceptions in short video.

bcbully

Reserved

MaxBacon

Yeah, many people that use that word even manipulate the meaning "not in that way, in the way I don't think they will be capable to deliver what they promise.", so they can just use the word to describe the project.

It's hyperbole. Who takes that seriously, some unfortunately do, but whelp that's up to them.

Limnic

Limnic

For clarification, that video seems to have taken a very shallow pass at the arguments and introduces multiple misconceptions of it's own.

For example;

1) The delay of the game.  While it was voted on, it was done so by a small subset of users without understand or awareness by the majority of backers. The poll taking place through their webpage for users that were only active participants in their community niche meant it was ultimately a echo chamber for desired opinion and results.

Beyond that the "duplo blocks" argument has a distinct flaw, especially when Elite is evoked as a comparison. Fundamentally the design of, well, anything needs a foundation in order to establish effective design implementation, workflow, and compatibility of features. Unfortunately for CIG, that was not how SC has been developed. Elite was designed with a much more bare-bones and streamlined concept of implementation in this regard with laying the groundwork and fundamental components of the game's design down to expand upon over time, which leads to...

2) Scope creep has very rarely ever been good, and is generally a negative term because it has generally crippled the development of titles that over-promise on what their studio can ultimately deliver. Inflating the dev team does not solve this problem, it just adds more moving parts that must ultimately be brought back together and unified at the end.

An example here is what was used in the video regarding the cities. Yes, it's visually impressive to see a "city planet", but there is a big distinction in functional value to be had between the two things presented. In the case of Elite's design they have built a city that, while unimpressive on visual scale, offers already the ability to dock at the city and traverse down into it. They have used their development of these features to establish a core for deeper interactive content where the version shown off for SC is nothing but a visual tileset that they will have to backtrack and take apart to turn into something functional. This leads us into the flaw with the next argument...

3) Saying the goalposts are being moved in regards to release could be an honest argument if not for a few key factors. For one, because of the aforementioned scope creep, the goalposts are constantly being moved by the devs themselves. Another hiccup is that the features in the game are very much disjointed and incomplete cobbling of proofs of concept. A semi-interactive tech demo. The game is very far removed from a stable implementation of the features on offer currently and also very far removed form anything that will resemble a release candidate. There will be no "game" to focus on for some time in this regard. Which is also why people tend to be concerned about the next point.

4)  The idea that CIG can run out of money is itself a little absurd given consideration to how they almost basically print cash. Thing is though, outside what they say is going on, there is nothing solid to actually show what their burn rate is or how big of a runway they truly have overall for development. The bigger concern about burn rate is how organized their studio(s) are and how much money is being wasted in development by uncoordinated production that has to be revised to merge every disparate project into a single product. Which brings about the fifth thing brought up.

5) The amount of content and features, and the innovative or outright complexity of the goals they have is staggering. It something that fundamentally takes time and sacrifice. Thing is though too, from what's already been offered through the alpha you can see there is a rather uncoordinated effort in some regards towards this and that's a very concerning factor regarding the potential success of the project long term. Having teams constantly prototyping features independently then merging them together only to run into bugs in implementation or compatibility problems with other feature sets is a very crippling misstep to have to deal with time and again. It was a major hurdle for SOE/Daybreak in trying to merge together their technologies for EQ Next, so much so that they eventually had to fold on the project, and it had a smaller scope than SC does.

Not saying CIG shouldn't try to do this, someone has to in order to push gaming in general towards greater progress. Constantly developing the same games off reused concepts and design principles has given us a rather strong limp and stagnation of the market, and ambitious titles like SC are needed in order to user developers into stepping forward to offer newer, better experiences. However, you have to be aware that this pioneering comes with very few guarantees of success, and even if the game makes it to release it may have to do so with numerous compromises.

I'm not inclined to think of SC as a scam. I like to believe that Roberts and everyone else involved really believes in the project and game and want to release the best thing they can. That does not make the game immune to flaws and problems relating to their approach or to monetizing the development of the game, or even more personal issues that some people may have.

kikoodutroa8

Limnic said:

For clarification, that video seems to have taken a very shallow pass at the arguments and introduces multiple misconceptions of it's own.

For example;

1) The delay of the game.  While it was voted on, it was done so by a small subset of users without understand or awareness by the majority of backers. The poll taking place through their webpage for users that were only active participants in their community niche meant it was ultimately a echo chamber for desired opinion and results.

Beyond that the "duplo blocks" argument has a distinct flaw, especially when Elite is evoked as a comparison. Fundamentally the design of, well, anything needs a foundation in order to establish effective design implementation, workflow, and compatibility of features. Unfortunately for CIG, that was not how SC has been developed. Elite was designed with a much more bare-bones and streamlined concept of implementation in this regard with laying the groundwork and fundamental components of the game's design down to expand upon over time, which leads to...

2) Scope creep has very rarely ever been good, and is generally a negative term because it has generally crippled the development of titles that over-promise on what their studio can ultimately deliver. Inflating the dev team does not solve this problem, it just adds more moving parts that must ultimately be brought back together and unified at the end.

An example here is what was used in the video regarding the cities. Yes, it's visually impressive to see a "city planet", but there is a big distinction in functional value to be had between the two things presented. In the case of Elite's design they have built a city that, while unimpressive on visual scale, offers already the ability to dock at the city and traverse down into it. They have used their development of these features to establish a core for deeper interactive content where the version shown off for SC is nothing but a visual tileset that they will have to backtrack and take apart to turn into something functional. This leads us into the flaw with the next argument...

3) Saying the goalposts are being moved in regards to release could be an honest argument if not for a few key factors. For one, because of the aforementioned scope creep, the goalposts are constantly being moved by the devs themselves. Another hiccup is that the features in the game are very much disjointed and incomplete cobbling of proofs of concept. A semi-interactive tech demo. The game is very far removed from a stable implementation of the features on offer currently and also very far removed form anything that will resemble a release candidate. There will be no "game" to focus on for some time in this regard. Which is also why people tend to be concerned about the next point.

4)  The idea that CIG can run out of money is itself a little absurd given consideration to how they almost basically print cash. Thing is though, outside what they say is going on, there is nothing solid to actually show what their burn rate is or how big of a runway they truly have overall for development. The bigger concern about burn rate is how organized their studio(s) are and how much money is being wasted in development by uncoordinated production that has to be revised to merge every disparate project into a single product. Which brings about the fifth thing brought up.

5) The amount of content and features, and the innovative or outright complexity of the goals they have is staggering. It something that fundamentally takes time and sacrifice. Thing is though too, from what's already been offered through the alpha you can see there is a rather uncoordinated effort in some regards towards this and that's a very concerning factor regarding the potential success of the project long term. Having teams constantly prototyping features independently then merging them together only to run into bugs in implementation or compatibility problems with other feature sets is a very crippling misstep to have to deal with time and again. It was a major hurdle for SOE/Daybreak in trying to merge together their technologies for EQ Next, so much so that they eventually had to fold on the project, and it had a smaller scope than SC does.

Not saying CIG shouldn't try to do this, someone has to in order to push gaming in general towards greater progress. Constantly developing the same games off reused concepts and design principles has given us a rather strong limp and stagnation of the market, and ambitious titles like SC are needed in order to user developers into stepping forward to offer newer, better experiences. However, you have to be aware that this pioneering comes with very few guarantees of success, and even if the game makes it to release it may have to do so with numerous compromises.

I'm not inclined to think of SC as a scam. I like to believe that Roberts and everyone else involved really believes in the project and game and want to release the best thing they can. That does not make the game immune to flaws and problems relating to their approach or to monetizing the development of the game, or even more personal issues that some people may have.

It's ok, the game is only in early alpha.

Babuinix

Limnic said:

For clarification, that video seems to have taken a very shallow pass at the arguments and introduces multiple misconceptions of it's own.

For example;

1) The delay of the game.  While it was voted on, it was done so by a small subset of users without understand or awareness by the majority of backers. The poll taking place through their webpage for users that were only active participants in their community niche meant it was ultimately a echo chamber for desired opinion and results.

Beyond that the "duplo blocks" argument has a distinct flaw, especially when Elite is evoked as a comparison. Fundamentally the design of, well, anything needs a foundation in order to establish effective design implementation, workflow, and compatibility of features. Unfortunately for CIG, that was not how SC has been developed. Elite was designed with a much more bare-bones and streamlined concept of implementation in this regard with laying the groundwork and fundamental components of the game's design down to expand upon over time, which leads to...

2) Scope creep has very rarely ever been good, and is generally a negative term because it has generally crippled the development of titles that over-promise on what their studio can ultimately deliver. Inflating the dev team does not solve this problem, it just adds more moving parts that must ultimately be brought back together and unified at the end.

An example here is what was used in the video regarding the cities. Yes, it's visually impressive to see a "city planet", but there is a big distinction in functional value to be had between the two things presented. In the case of Elite's design they have built a city that, while unimpressive on visual scale, offers already the ability to dock at the city and traverse down into it. They have used their development of these features to establish a core for deeper interactive content where the version shown off for SC is nothing but a visual tileset that they will have to backtrack and take apart to turn into something functional. This leads us into the flaw with the next argument...

3) Saying the goalposts are being moved in regards to release could be an honest argument if not for a few key factors. For one, because of the aforementioned scope creep, the goalposts are constantly being moved by the devs themselves. Another hiccup is that the features in the game are very much disjointed and incomplete cobbling of proofs of concept. A semi-interactive tech demo. The game is very far removed from a stable implementation of the features on offer currently and also very far removed form anything that will resemble a release candidate. There will be no "game" to focus on for some time in this regard. Which is also why people tend to be concerned about the next point.

4)  The idea that CIG can run out of money is itself a little absurd given consideration to how they almost basically print cash. Thing is though, outside what they say is going on, there is nothing solid to actually show what their burn rate is or how big of a runway they truly have overall for development. The bigger concern about burn rate is how organized their studio(s) are and how much money is being wasted in development by uncoordinated production that has to be revised to merge every disparate project into a single product. Which brings about the fifth thing brought up.

5) The amount of content and features, and the innovative or outright complexity of the goals they have is staggering. It something that fundamentally takes time and sacrifice. Thing is though too, from what's already been offered through the alpha you can see there is a rather uncoordinated effort in some regards towards this and that's a very concerning factor regarding the potential success of the project long term. Having teams constantly prototyping features independently then merging them together only to run into bugs in implementation or compatibility problems with other feature sets is a very crippling misstep to have to deal with time and again. It was a major hurdle for SOE/Daybreak in trying to merge together their technologies for EQ Next, so much so that they eventually had to fold on the project, and it had a smaller scope than SC does.

Not saying CIG shouldn't try to do this, someone has to in order to push gaming in general towards greater progress. Constantly developing the same games off reused concepts and design principles has given us a rather strong limp and stagnation of the market, and ambitious titles like SC are needed in order to user developers into stepping forward to offer newer, better experiences. However, you have to be aware that this pioneering comes with very few guarantees of success, and even if the game makes it to release it may have to do so with numerous compromises.

I'm not inclined to think of SC as a scam. I like to believe that Roberts and everyone else involved really believes in the project and game and want to release the best thing they can. That does not make the game immune to flaws and problems relating to their approach or to monetizing the development of the game, or even more personal issues that some people may have.

These are all valid points to go through when the game comes out, judging before it's a precipitous move.

Every single game that as gone through the development stages has gone through the same troubles of Star Citizen, some less some even worse. All that it matters is the end product but Star Citizen business model capitalizes on the ongoing effort of what they are doing, they leverage it to continue to do what they want in the most ambitious way possible.

Big Ambition, more awareness, more backing, bigger Game.

That is good, that is awesome. The restless and cynics can cry & shout al they want but the course is set and going at full swing way pass the 90 day's top scheduled

Erillion

>>>

In the case of Elite's design they have built a city that, while unimpressive on visual scale, offers already the ability to dock at the city and traverse down into it.
>>>

They have ? Let me know where and how, because i am a long term Elite player.

I suspect you mean docking at space stations or landing at lunar outposts. And no, that is not a city ;-)   And the Thargoid caves are also not cities.

>>>>

where the version shown off for SC is nothing but a visual tileset
>>>>

Let me remind you of the second tool shown by CIG in Offenbach that allows them to potentially turn every building created by Tool 1 (the city building tool) into a fully explorable location (if necessary).  They do not plan to do that currently, but they could. They plan to use Tool 2 to create special locations in the cities created by Tool 1. Cities on planets created by Tool 3.

Have fun

Limnic

Erillion said:

>>>

In the case of Elite's design they have built a city that, while unimpressive on visual scale, offers already the ability to dock at the city and traverse down into it.
>>>

They have ? Let me know where and how, because i am a long term Elite player.

I suspect you mean docking at space stations or landing at lunar outposts. And no, that is not a city ;-)   And the Thargoid caves are also not cities.

>>>>

where the version shown off for SC is nothing but a visual tileset
>>>>

Let me remind you of the second tool shown by CIG in Offenbach that allows them to potentially turn every building created by Tool 1 (the city building tool) into a fully explorable location (if necessary).  They do not plan to do that currently, but they could. They plan to use Tool 2 to create special locations in the cities created by Tool 1. Cities on planets created by Tool 3.

Have fun

1) There's videos on youtube if ya just google it, and they even made mention in the video linked in this thread.

2) Adding more details to a location does not make it a functional asset. Matrix Online had that functionality and for the most part it was superfluous. As you already acknowledged SC wants to flesh out specific locations to utilize this stuff, and even still the Tool 2 you mentioned is not producing an interactable object, it's a further scaling of the tileset that still needs the infrastructure to be functional.

This isn't to say SC isn't making progress, as they actually are.
What it is saying is let's not be dishonest.

Limnic

Babuinix said:

These are all valid points to go through when the game comes out, judging before it's a precipitous move.

Every single game that as gone through the development stages has gone through the same troubles of Star Citizen, some less some even worse. All that it matters is the end product but Star Citizen business model capitalizes on the ongoing effort of what they are doing, they leverage it to continue to do what they want in the most ambitious way possible.

Big Ambition, more awareness, more backing, bigger Game.

That is good, that is awesome. The restless and cynics can cry & shout al they want but the course is set and going at full swing way pass the 90 day's top scheduled

Yup, here's to hoping it turns out well.

alkarionlog

some people not only are delusional they even waste time to convince others they are not, or are trying to convince thenself? I really don't care

Luiden

The next Bernard Madoff.

Babuinix

Luiden said:

The next Bernard Madoff.

But with space ship's and free will, right?

Erillion

Limnic said:

1) There's videos on youtube if ya just google it, and they even made mention in the video linked in this thread.

As suspected you mean the big walled outposts on airless planets and moons.

E:D had those since "Horizons" in 2015.

The one on Mercury is quite nice and not small. However, I would not call it a city by a long shot.


Have fun

Balmong

Erillion said:

Limnic said:

1) There's videos on youtube if ya just google it, and they even made mention in the video linked in this thread.

As suspected you mean the big walled outposts on airless planets and moons.

E:D had those since "Horizons" in 2015.

The one on Mercury is quite nice and not small. However, I would not call it a city by a long shot.


Have fun

Let alone something you can "traverse".

Erillion

Balmong said:

Let alone something you can "traverse".

It is big enough to drive around with the exploration rover.


Have fun

Wizardry

I stopped watching after about 2 minutes...why?
Well i will tell you why.He is not too bright and just a typical NAIVE person that believes anything he sees.

So he starts by talking about 1 reason,promised in 2014 ,never getting made.Now obviously the word NEVER is a bit harsh and imo unrealistic.However this is where the naive comes in and i can point directly to an identical situation way back when with SOE and Smedley.

He says CIG took a pole asking if they wanted to keep developing or end it now....lol,and how does he know this was not a fabricated pole to achieve an answer they were intent on delivering no matter what factual result the pole gave?Like sitting in our chairs,how would one single person know if the pole was legit at all?

So waaaaaaaaaay back when Smedley said his cash shop idea was just going to be a test and  if it was a success,he would still run BOTH,cash shop and regular subbed servers.He made so much money on cash shop he said screw that,i'll just turn it all into a one giant cash shop.

Point being you can NOT trust the people in charge,they have zero benefit from telling the truth but  loads to gain by lying.We see this same total bullshit when devs say .."we are listening to the players,they are helping us build this game".If i say something then you say something,then the next three people have ideas,you honestly think the devs are listening to them all without just going with that they want to do anyhow but are bound to fall into someone's lap and say "see we were listening".

My final comment.I am not saying what is coming out of Roberts mouth is ALWAYS a lie but neither is it always the truth.Also on that same first idea this YouTuber was throwing out there,Roberts was NOT promising some half assed lego blocks game,he was promising a GREAT game in that 2 years,so much so that Angry Joe was calling it the best game coming.Nobody,especially Angry Joe is going to endorse a half assed product BEFORE it is even 10-20% made.He bought int oit because Robert's was predicting a AAA game and NOT this legoblox this youTuber is spewing about nonsense.

Wizardry

I can even point to a similar pole here at MMORPG that likely EVERYONE remembers.

Asking us if we wanted content from various areas not mmorpg's.I think the NAIVE thought a legit question but the common sense people KNEW it was coming no matter what any user said.

Then there was some questionnaire about why people were commenting on such and such threads with NO CLUE that people were simply commenting on the current forum topics and NOT delving into individual game  forums.The questions were DISGUISED to be legit but i could EASILY see they had an agenda and imo a RUDE one.

So yeah i am just saying this sort of "we listen,we ask"happens a LOT and is almost always bull crap.

Arglebargle

Even as a hardcore SC skeptic, it's not really a scam, per se.   Roberts really does want to deliver the best damn space game ever.   He likes being the Big Dog, the Big Man on Campus.  All his strutting around on video, at conventions, etc, it feeds his Big Head.   Sadly, he's too disorganized to do a decent job as the Big Boss, and his egotism doesn't allow any long term delegation of authority to someone who isn't  a sycophant or fellow traveller.

So not a scam, but certainly a Red Queen's Race to keep things going and money coming in.  

MadFrenchie

Babuinix said:

Luiden said:

The next Bernard Madoff.

But with space ship's and free will, right?

Pretty sure Madoff had ships and free will..  Or maybe just one of the two. Can't remember which off-hand, though.

Babuinix

MadFrenchie said:

Babuinix said:

Luiden said:

The next Bernard Madoff.

But with space ship's and free will, right?

Pretty sure Madoff had ships and free will..  Or maybe just one of the two. Can't remember which off-hand, though.

Pretty sure he didn't or else he would have travelled to another system.

someforumguy

1. SC will never be released.

He did not counter the claim of SC not going to be released ever (if that is even possible). His duplo comparison to lego was just dumb. You can do either after releasing a base game and continueing development. It just depends on how you plan it from the start. It has nothing to do with if SC will ever be released or not. Which leads to point 2.

2. Scope creep.

Using E:D as example, a game that did the exact opposite, meaning releasing it before it was even close to being ready. What has this to do with scope creep?
Scope creep is adding more features while the game is already in development, so it moves the completely goal only forward and forward. It can even force you to backtrack when it means you have to change fundamentals. Or worse, mess up planning. The whole comparison with E:D was pointless and not an argument why scope creep is not bad in the case of SC.

My opinion: Whether this is bad is solely up to the backers of SC and their expectations of when SC will become the game they want.

3. They took 180M and the game does not exist.

The scope creep game does not exist . But then it needs time to be developed.
So if you embrace the scope creep, then I agree that it is dumb to say ' they took 180m and there is no game'. But if you are against the scope creep, you can say ' because of that naive scope creep there is no game yet'. So I think this point calls for more nuance and I suspect that it usually also exists within the criticism and that Montoya just throws it all on a big pile.

My opinion : Atm, there are mechanics, but it is not a game yet. But apart from that I don't really care when/if it releases. But any fallout can affect other game companies' business models and development choices and I do care about that.

4. CiG is going to run out of money (again this falls back to why scope creep could be problematic). 
Personally I don't see this as a problem if it would happen. Because it would be immediately the solution to scope creep   They would cut features that were planned for release and release whatever half baked stuff they were working on. From here it could still turn into a very good game.
Montoya's belief though is just that, belief. For both sides there is nothing to claim here without a crystal ball.

5. What CiG is doing is impossible.

I would like to turn that into my opinion : What CiG is doing might be impossible to manage in this way and with this CEO. And again this leads back to scope creep. I really think someone should keep CR in check, but I suspect he surrounded himself with people who are afraid to challenge him. CEO's should always be challenged.


Disclaimer : I don't think SC is a scam from a legal point of view, but I do think it is kind of an unorganised mess though and I expect them to waste a lot of money because of that. And scope creep is at the heart of this.

That video did not really impress me and I suspect will only impress people who already believe what Montoya believes.

Raquis

when star citizen finally releases one day everyone is going to say this is not worth 200 million dollars this was a scam!

Limnic

Erillion said:

Limnic said:

1) There's videos on youtube if ya just google it, and they even made mention in the video linked in this thread.

As suspected you mean the big walled outposts on airless planets and moons.

E:D had those since "Horizons" in 2015.

The one on Mercury is quite nice and not small. However, I would not call it a city by a long shot.


Have fun

So the video posted above tells false information.

Not surprised.

Phaserlight

Babuinix said:

Montoya with some great points in this video



Clarifying some of the usual misconceptions in short video.

@ 1 minute in, the pain is real.

#4 is due to the fact that they are a private company, not a public one.  It seems like $180 million warrants public scrutiny. 

The ending is ridiculous and proves nothing.

I hope he is right on all counts. Just realize you are gambling.