Thread by @dsmart

My social media DMs are blowing up again. There must be a new Star Citizen fiasco brewing. And yes, there totally is. And yes it's about the badly broken 3.9 build which CIG shockingly released to live servers yesterday against the advisory from their own wave of testers.

In case you missed the latest scope creep fiasco, you can catch up on this thread.

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1254456125312962560?s=20

Having shoved yet another massive scope creep feature into the game, and which literally broke everything you could possibly imagine, CIG made the decision to release it anyway. Why? Because they have a ship they want to sell for $395 - $440. Yup

robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…

Heck, they even released a new trailer for this 3.9 build. No seriously, they did.

The comments are pure Gold. Do stay for the comments

"By the time this is fully released, humanity would have colonized mars."

Even as CIG was prepping to release a badly broken build, backers were flooding the forums literally begging them not to release it to live servers. Here are some choice threads, complete with hilarity.

reddit.com/r/starcitizen_…

It's almost as if adding new unplanned features would cause brand new problems while exacerbating preexisting ones. But hey when you have over $350M of someone else's money to burn with zero accountability, you can pretty much do anything you want.

I remember back when Star Marine (the other notable scope creep) was announced, then canned because they couldn't get it to together. Then in a year when they wanted a shiny new object to dangle in front of backers, it was suddenly back on the menu. That was 2014.

More often than not, a project can get sidelined with the need to show progress - especially if the funding relies on a third-party. In the case of Star Citizen, their funding comes from backers who fund based on promises and the next shiny object cast in front of them.

We now know that the backer money - despite it being to the tune of $275M to date - isn't enough. Hence the needing accredited backer funds to the tune of $63.5M.

For those not following every aspect of this train-wreck, it’s difficult to understand wtf is actually going on.

They literally pulled this stunt back in Nov 2019 when they announced Theatres of War because Q4 is their biggest yearly funding period - every year. So their incentive is to come up with new and shiny objects during that period for CitizenCon whale milking.

When you look at the Q4/19 work, and the CitizenCon presentation, it’s easy to see that there were no new shiny objects to shove in front of backers. So ToW it was. And they planned that for months because what you saw in the video started work months before.

Like ever other instance of their "open development", backers knew nothing about ToW until Nov 2019. They took almost 6 months to build that. Then trashed because it was horrid, unfinished, literally unplayable (Star Citizen netcode is shit on stick) etc.

The same thing happened with Star Marine when 2014 turned into 2016.

Jan 2016:

pcinvasion.com/star-citizens-…

July 2016:

gameranx.com/features/id/66…

Then suddenly, just like that, it was back on the menu and automagically appeared in the Q4/2016 build that was 2.6 (Lumberyard engine switch we now know were based on BLATANT LIES as per the Crytek lawsuit)

pcgamesn.com/star-citizen/s…

It was trash. Eventually backers got bored with it - and CIG stopped updating it. It is still trash, littered with bugs and is the most generic fps in the history of AAA budget games. Someone created a website dedicated to charting its ill-fate dev path

web.archive.org/web/2016012801…

What made Star Marine noteworthy was that it helped show just how terrible the netcode in Star Citizen is. And to this day, it hasn't improved. Which is why they're still stuck with 50 client instances in which anything above 8 clients is terrible.

If nothing else, the [gutted] 3.9 build which was expected to have vastly improved netcode now serves to show that they truly have hit the tech wall with no room to move forward at any reasonable pace.

Remember, they don't even have a SINGLE finished star system of the 106 they promised. Back in 2018 I explained why we'd come to this point before long.

But wait! There's more!

dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6…

Remember back when they sold plots of land in a game that had ZERO planetary land masses? Sure you do. That was back in Q4/2017. Yup.

pcgamer.com/star-citizen-p…

A month later they released the much touted 3.0 build which had the first planetary land mass.

polygon.com/2017/12/27/168…

As of this writing, April 2020, not only is there no gameplay functionality for the sold land masses, but the final planet in the single star system arrived in 3.8 (Dec 2019).

pcgamer.com/star-citizens-…

They started working on planetary tech in 2015. First planet arrived in 3.0 (Dec 2017). The final planet was completed in 3.9 (Apr 2020). So yeah, it took them almost 3 yrs to make a SINGLE starsystem.

Oh, it's not finished yet actually.

This is the single Stanton starsystem

These are the locations within

For backer's land purchase, not a SINGLE aspect of gameplay related to owning plots of land, let alone what to do with it, exists in the game. Why? Because there's no mechanic for world building or consumable creation.

But Wait! There's more!

As the scope creep increases, even as the custom CryEngine buckles under the weight of all the crap that's sitting atop, backers have watched the system requirements increase from a modest one, to the current recommended of i9 CPU, 32GB RAM, an SSD, and a $650+ video card.

And 3.9 firmly seals the fate and solidifies the fact that they have truly hit the tech wall. Meanwhile, a shop (that sells water) in your AAA $350M game looks like this - at the highest visual setting.

Most of the die-hard backers are so fed-up, most have jumped on the video making bandwagon documenting the "lies" and the missteps.

While the backers turned haters (according to the die-hards) are having a field day with the 3.9 fiasco.

Meanwhile over there at the official enclave, it looks like this:

"Its obvious CIG rushed 3.9. It still feels like a PTU patch"

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

The long and short of it is that this nonsense will continue until Chris runs out of money and rail road track. Then it will all come to a screeching halt. The $63.5M bailout was just the tip of the iceberg.

/end

LOL!! He's at it again. This time with a 3.9 stream (hilarious)