SC is an actual flight sim, not a spreadsheet simulator, so EVE will be just fine

Wow, you gave Chris Roberts $750?

This is why we can't have nice things. All it takes is for a known over promise under deliver guy to make new promises and people throw money at him.

Makes me want to start a kickstarter with my own gaming promises to steal 10 million and roll out laughing.

In looking back over some of your dust posting, the praise you have for another behind schedule overhyped game is understandable I suppose.

I wouldn't have advised people to give CCP one cent after FF'14, but I am not their mothers.

Anyone want to take bets on how many years behind schedule SC will get a full release?

ORIGIN 325A FIGHTER
PACKAGE - CONSTELLATION ANDROMEDA
HORNET F7C-R TRACKER
CUTLASS BLACK GÇô PACKAGE (Gifted to my friend, Jeremy, for his 21st Birthday)

Honestly the biggest hang up I have for SC is that it sounds, thus far, like Feature Creep, the game.

Feature creep in software development is one of the most dangerous and easiest things to do, especially with a culture of hype such as Star Citizen has. There are so many promised features and capabilities and things to do all with incredibly intricate things that it at times feels like features were added or thought of on a "this would be cool" concept rather than fitting into a larger game structure.

Take for example a few matters, they featured long cut scenes on undock / dock up. Having played EVE I can tell you that such actions are rather mundane and having to wait for any period of cut scene is annoying, and from playing SWTOR that was a big gripe of mine. Other annoyances are in things such as the packing system and storage systems for freighter vehicles that were unveiled and talked about when those ships were first on sell.

While a lot of what can be done sounds cool, I feel the features will ultimately become needless busy work, or annoyances. Players who enjoy hauling freight in games such as ED and EVE are unlikely to enjoy the sub-activites around freighting (stacking up the cargo, arranging them, adding advertisement windows, ensuring proper stacking and the tetris like mini-game of positioning supplies.

These concepts can be cool by themselves but when weaved into a larger user story seem less and less like the core enjoyment and instead busy work that keeps players from the main reason they do an activity. Think of it this way, imagine if in DUST you could add a few % more damage (like a basic damage mod) to a weapon damage by doing some sort of weapon cleaning mini-game, and this had to be done every couple of battles. This might be fun once or twice but would quickly become a tiresome chore. Still many players would do it because of the added benefits however slight.



What I am trying to get it is that my problem with SC is that it has so many proposed features many of which sound like mini-games or cut scenes that would be enjoyable for a short while but quickly become tiresome. (Looking at you Passenger Ship mini-games) This, combined with the fact many different activities feel so disjoint from each other as to feel totally unrelated. Then every few months the game has a sale which introduces a new ship type, often with completely new features introduced with it that apply to that specific flavor of ship. This is feature creep, and only causes the end product to take more and more development time.

Hrmm, allow me to try to explain a bit better about why I feel this is bad by giving an example in World of Warcraft.

The idea here is that extra activities create "dead time" via the common MMO trend of players feeling that they are required to do something to feel optimized. The example here is the Garrison from the Warlords of Draenor Expansion (kind of like the Warbarge in DUST)

It is an activity that -technically- is not forced except for certain small inputs of time. However it offers benefits that many players feel are required to be optimized. As such players feel forced to do these activities, and do so, especially because they provide direct benefits. However these things are NOT fun for the player. Nobody plays WoW for the Garrison activities, they are just a roadblock in the path to doing the things they want. They will still do them however and just feel annoyed at the feature set. It is ultimately not good game design for engaging the player in the game, and detracts from their play time doing the things they want to do. (As a parallel to DUST, imagine if the Warbarge took 30 min - 1 hour to collect everything from, but at highest level always gave one officer weapon at the end of it all)

Simulation games can be quite fun, but forcing simulation is going to hurt the experience especially when it becomes repetitive. I mean, sure having a bladder system in a game is making it a better simulation, but I'm sure players are not going to enjoy having to take a **** every few hours in game while playing in game.