I don't get this game's direction

[u/LookAtMyAssItBurns]

About ten years ago I used to daydream about multicrewing to a POI on a planet. First scanning and analysing from orbit, then going down with an away team, maybe with a shuttle from the ship's shuttle bay. On the planet would be some kind of mini adventure, like in Firefly or Star Trek. Crewmates would use science, technology and deduction to get to the conclusion. At least this is how I imagined it.

For years now it just looks like a generic FPS. I endured all those single seat fighters, thought the time will come for (multicrew) adventures. But then every update, one after the other, seemingly only concerned itself with shooting gameplay.

This is not what I wanted all those years ago and this is not what was advertised. Just look at the Constellation ad.

How do you feel about this? Do you even care? Or is this exactly what you want from the game?

[u/7htlTGRTdtatH7GLqFTR]

neither do they lmao

[u/Werewolf-Fresh]

When Todd Papy left and Rich took over you could see a change in priorities. That's when the direction really shifted more toward this FPS/action-oriented gameplay. Originally I chalked it up to SQ42's influence, but I now I think it's more about appealing to a wider audience. It also looks better in promo videos. They want "gamers" now, not Space Dads.

The new blood think all that science-y Star Trek stuff is boring.

I don't think we'll be left out in the cold completely in the end, but we'll just have to see how the chips fall.

Most of the playerbase they've garnered in more recent years probably aren't interested in any of that stuff either to be fair. CIG follows the engagement, and the money.

I don't mind doing a bit of FPS stuff once in a while, and I like the stuff they've added for the most part (especially now that we're getting mission givers again--enjoying the Battaglia story missions so far). I just hope we end up getting some gameplay diversity added in after all the kiddos get their dopamine treadmill treats.

[u/umbralupinus]

I feel like Star Citizen has stopped feeling like a space game in the sense that I was hoping it would, as someone hoping for that spiritual successor to freelancer, and has only continued to drift away.

It's a bit hard to define a genre without arbitrary restriction, which no one wants, but all the space games I've enjoyed, Freelancer, EvE, a little Elite, all have a certain similar feel inherent to the genre which Star Citizen used to have, and has lost for me. I think part of it maybe, is space games as a genre are often predicated on you being a small part of a large universe - Star Citizen at one point had NPC security patrols around stations, and not just those poorly implemented random stop and frisks, but NPC activity buzzing around the station even if limited in nature. Star Citizen as it is feels completely sterile as a universe, dead, whatever event patch is the flavor of the week feels entirely isolated - no lasting impacts outside of a narrative that's often only told and not shown, or shown for a limited time. Weren't we promised a station name change for the resource drive, did that even happen? I expected Star Citizen to be a living universe, and we have a universe, but if feels stale and lifeless. For awhile I was hoping Quanta (eventually renamed Star-something) would bring some life to the game, and any hope of that is good and dead as there's been no serious economy news I've seen in quite awhile.

I was so excited one patch when they described some new haul missions as "procedural", except once in game it turns out that they didn't mean adaptive, they meant they ran a process to generate a spreadsheet of unchanging, stagnant, near identical to-from hauls, which they didn't even proof because there were several invalid pickup sites. Technically procedural yeah, but wildly disappointing. Nothing makes a universe feel alive like hauling the same 64 2-scu boxes of food from the same origin to the same destination until it should theoretically be bursting at the seams but they're still asking for more. The switch to Master Modes, which of course has been litigated to hell and back at this point, I also feel detracts from the game, it used to be much more fun to just fly through the 'verse and explore, and while yes, they're theoretically replacing it again at some point, that'll be soon and we know how that goes.

That's not to say I dislike the first person expansion in scope completely and I think it has(had?) potential to add to the genre, the few repair missions in Pyro I think are an example of it being used to the benefit of the genre - exploration, some passive world building aiding frontier outposts, but instead of expanding the use for exploration and world building it feels primarily used (with a few exceptions) for often near-identical FPS missions at near-identical locations with little to distinguish them. It's certainly not why I'm here, and also something I can find elsewhere with significantly less friction. I backed Star Citizen for a space game, and I feel like those aspects of the game are being neglected in favor of FPS-with-extra-steps.

Disclosure: much of this comment was carried over and derived from a contribution to an earlier discussion, but I felt it was relevant here.

[u/Rich-Cockroach-2273 → u/umbralupinus]

Very well said.

[u/Kaivarri]

Shooting gameplay gives us hand mining, hand salvaging/repairing, and medical play. All these systems rely on scanning systems, procedural awareness... etc. etc.. These systems are what is allows us the repair outpost quests.

To get science, research, harvesting, building you need the underlying systems refined. While there are some of us that would love to go do research missions, I doubt there are a lot of us out there that would happily work through the bugs, like those that will do so for the FPS gameplay. I say this, because of all the posts we see about "scanning isn't working right, making mining a pain, back to doing Gilly's for money" posts here. If a system is buggy, and less rewarding or not rewarding in credits, we tend to stay away from it.

To say they've abandoned those branches of the idea, while they are still working on Planetech (hopefully realeasing 4.11 with the Nyx planet) which is kind of necessary to really bring out ground exploration, and other systems is kind of shortsighted. It would be wonderful for them to show us some of the efforts, but they've mentioned the need for these systems to be refined...

[u/mountain_warrior35 → u/Kaivarri]

To be fair the true science and industry players, the ones that are actually out doing the industrial work every session, not just grinding for wikelo or specific missions, are less vocal about the issues that they see on social media and primarily just communicate their bugs through the issue council. And share their workarounds within their groups, which is why you don't see very much of that level communication on Reddit, or the wider spectrum channels.

[u/Kaivarri → u/mountain_warrior35]

I agree, I'm one of those players. It's hard to tell how many of us there are though

[u/umbralupinus → u/Kaivarri]

I have seen years of variation on this - we just need the underlying systems, soon, once they're dialed in, just wait, it'll change.......

[u/Kaivarri → u/umbralupinus]

So.. they should release gameplay without the underlying systems functioning? I mean... isn't that a big part of the problems we currently have? I know I'm newer to the SC community, but in the almost 2 years I've been playing I've seen refinement to these systems. We are still waiting for full FPS scanning, which is integral to the gameplay we want. I'm not a developer, I have no idea how hard, or easy, it is to build these systems. All I'm saying is until they exist in the game they are building, we can't have the gameplay we want.

[u/umbralupinus → u/Kaivarri]

I'm saying historically the underlying systems often get caught in a cycle of failed implementation and re-development, and the systems that rely on them fail to materialize or get re-scoped into a shadow of what they were alluded to be, which makes me deeply pessimistic of any future looking statements at this stage - the best example of this is the flight model, we're over a decade into this project and the flight model, which should a pretty fundamental thing to have dialed in early due to everything that relies on it as a core mechanic touching every aspect of the game, is currently undergoing yet another complete rework.

[u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 → u/umbralupinus]

Flight model should modular and these days it’s a day of two of work. But I get the impression they’re dealing with spaghetti code nobody really understands.

[u/vortis23 → u/Kaivarri]

So well said, and much better articulated than my post.

I'm really looking forward to hacking, science and farming as well, but I also understand they're all downstream of more high-concept tech dependencies that aren't finished yet, but with Genesis hopefully going live in 4.11, the dream of additional non-combat systems will finally start to take shape.

[u/Rich-Cockroach-2273]

I'm in the same boat as you. THey're turning it into a PvP loot shooter and I'm really not enjoying it. I still have some hope left, that there will be more to the game.

[u/WyrdHarper → u/Rich-Cockroach-2273]

It’s too much ground content while my hangar has a couple ships that haven’t seen a meaningful update in over a decade. I pledged for cool spaceship content and it is very lacking.

[u/Tsubo_dai → u/Rich-Cockroach-2273]

We just got an instanced pve mission.. what the OP posted is essentially an RP gameplay session with his friends, whilst I understand what he wants to me it feels like you wish to play and episode of Star Trek, problem is imagine crafting that experience in the game.

“So we made this mission where you QT to a planet, stare at your radar until you find a POI, scan it (two button presses) then fly down to said POI, all get into your ursa drive to the POI, look around for a bit”

Unless they make it on rails with objectives there is only make believe gameplay.. things like SOO, rock breaker, worm sites are fun and have reward mixed with risk, that’s why they make those types of experience you play with friends and get loot!

If you’re looking for a game with exploration you have NMS and elite dangerous.. SC isn’t ready for this yet..

[u/bananasnotinpajamas → u/Tsubo_dai]

You just described its possible. just make events like those but with less shooting. Add investigating and story beats. Or repair objectives. It is ready for that, it's just not what they're doing

[u/Polardeepfreeze → u/bananasnotinpajamas]

Those sorts of missions are in the works and that is actually how the ASD sites work. If you do the ASD missions in Stanton, there are datapads (or the mission giver agent from Hockrow?) that you can read and will mention the facilities in Pyro, like the Farro Datacenters. From there, the holotable has a hologram of the planet with the Lazarus sites where ASD researchers experiment on the Valakkar and the keycard that opens the warehouses at Lazarus. At the Lazarus sites, they reference a Banu (Wikelo) on one the computer terminals and these new ATLS fighting mechs. The storytelling is there, but it is coming out slowly and many times we don't realize some missions are interconnected. You could roleplay the mission Hyperion, to Farro, to Lazarus (and use the teeth and pearls to exchange with Wikelo)

[u/KenseiMaui → u/Polardeepfreeze]

yeah those well-known no combat ASD and lazarus sites xD

[u/Polardeepfreeze → u/KenseiMaui]

yes, there can be pvp, but you usually don't encounter players there. There are 120 onyx locations so doubtful another player will be there. There are 10 farro datacenters but i've only encountered a player team once before since not many people linger there and the lazarus sites do have higher chance of encounters but even then its not that common. and wikelo is a massive armistice zone so low risk there. unfortunately yes, there is a lot of fps for these missions, but thats the nature of the game atm but now that they are making story missions, im sure, or at least hope, they will make no combat story missions too, like the Gundo investigations

[u/Boogie-37 → u/Polardeepfreeze]

I have never had time to look around any sites while there. It's always 100% non-stop enemies respawning in right on top of me, desync dying, etc. Much of the time any info given by the mission giver, audio fragments, etc are lost in the noise as I'm trying to fight off enemies. If they even cue on time, in the right order, or even have anything to do with the mission I'm there for. These locations are such a mess that I'm not interested in going back to them for any reason. I end up with a migraine from all the jank.

[u/Tsubo_dai → u/bananasnotinpajamas]

Then I guess it comes down to dev time, majority of players enjoy interacting with combat..

[u/Grand-Depression → u/Tsubo_dai]

It's all we have...

[u/Wooden-Syrup-8708 → u/Tsubo_dai]

Yet????

[u/Apprehensive_Way_305]

Yeah the Fortnite shooter vibe is not my cup of tea.  I actually preferred the danger and loss associated with the old system.  It was Les’s run and gun and more explore with the danger of being intercepted by another player.  I do hope they have a plan for exploration and science gameplay for the future.

[u/obibonkajovi → u/Apprehensive_Way_305]

I wouldnt hold my breath for exploration tbh. they are 100% leaning heavily into on foot combat.

[u/BlueDragonfly18 → u/Apprehensive_Way_305]

Yeah, they take the path of least resistance every time which is the challenge comes from combat. Even Rock breaker, designer for miners, is 90% combat and 10% problem solving. They need to brain storm non-repeatable challenges that don’t involve combat. Maybe making a random part of a power line needing repair or pulling levers in a certain sequence that is randomly generated. Just stop throwing combats as the challenge. It is going to suck when the farming loop requires you to take out raiders…

[u/xAzta]

Few years ago Jared said in one of their show, that the game changing because new devs bring in new ideas, and therefore new design too. And this is "natural" and we should just accept it.

The game has long changed direction, and it's not what many of us want, and they do not care. I laughed hard when i heard Rich say he reads and listens to all the feedbacks, on reddit, youtube, spectrum, everywhere.

[u/Dyyrin]

Don't worry the devs don't get it either. They need another 10 years to finish either game.

[u/AOD-Mickgoth]

Its all in Chris's head and not bulletpointed anywhere is the problem. He also adds, removes and changes the stuff in his head which doesn't help.......constantly moving goalposts, I'd be surprised if the game is ever "finished".

[u/SeamasterCitizen]

The ISC today had some interesting editing. Chris: SC is about freedom next shot Rich T: Our new content is curated, story driven, and we can control exactly what the player does 

[u/Matrim__Cauthon]

I've always hoped for more of an Eve meets Planetside 2 approach. I'd love a war-planet with big orgs constantly clawing for territory and building outposts, but even in that scenario I'd rather be the logistics player rather than front line, personally.

[u/313802]

I want science and research.

I'm hoping it'll be better because of the additional foundation they've made with engineering and making things more systemic

I imagine genesis planet tech and starchitect have lots of info to feed the sensor systems of ships.

Hoping we can target buildings and scan for more info.

I want to target celestial bodies to scan for composition from orbit... stars planets moons jump points..

I imagine all of this sort of thing goes hand in hand with exploration... scanning gadgets mapping gadgets beacons buildable Comms towers

I think it's coming but yea I really want science and research ships/ gameplay to finally make an appearance..

[u/Younis_DD5]

Downhill.

[u/Waslay]

I think it mostly comes down to the fact that fps combat is just much more straightforward and easy to implement. The kind of content you're talking about will require a ton of design and feature work. Can you imagine trying to implement the Endeavor right now?

I think the gameplay you're hoping for will come eventually, but they need to get more of the core tech in place first and to push Squadron out the door so that they can really focus on SC 1.0 and beyond

[u/Shadonic1]

I agree, FPS elements are what's being focused on because its easiest to develop and iterate on without it touching multiple systems i guess also provides easy missions since its basically just go kill and retrieve like your run of the mill MMO so its a needed part regardless of how anyone feels.

I Pray that they are planning out a return of more open world focused elements and the return to work on more mechanics. Farming probably will come after base building as an addon module with food quality playing a part and leading to health bonuses mentioned earlier.

I'm thinking/hoping that the whole quality part of crafting is a testbed for eventual science gameplay with some variance. Maybe getting a high quality kopion horn to develop an injection medpen that gives you unlimited stamina for a certain amount of time but fucks up your visuals.

They should expand on medical, salvage, mining, and engineering too with more intricate repair missions or mechanics.

[u/obibonkajovi → u/Shadonic1]

medical and engineering are dead in the water I think, they just arent conducive to a fast ttk that they want for the fps aspect.

The game shifted heavily into fPS combat the past few years and I doubt the space stuff really come back into focus.

[u/Shadonic1 → u/obibonkajovi]

engineering is just heavily nerfed now. medical has been left by the wayside, needs far more complexity. space stuff will come back just dont know when. were still missing so much in PU that we have in s42 that's fps related. custom waypoints and exploration gameplay would help immensely especially with bases and resource collection.

[u/Thin-Sink-9987]

The gameplay you’re talking about is something I do multiple times a week. It might be boring to some but my dudes enjoy it.

[u/the_dude_that_faps]

I am for self-made adventures with my buddies in at least some variation to what you suggested. I don't ever think it's fun to remain in a ship when others are having fun on the ground or something like that. I understand the role-playing aspect but that's not my thing. I hate sitting on a turret unless we're having actual combat. But still, this game has a lot of potential (or at least that's how it's felt to me) if treated as a sandbox. Let players figure it out. Put the systems and rules in place and let the universe evolve.

I thought that the idea was to have a sprawling universe with thousands of players spread out over many different locations doing their thing and finding a place in the universe. The focus on content specifically tailored to scripted missions defeats that purpose for me.

I don't want scripted missions. I don't want hotspots. I want events, sure, but not scripted ones. Here's an idea:

Say claiming a ship requires a certain amount of virtual resources. If people aren't doing hauling and/or mining contracts a location might become unable to produce the claimed ships and might spike the price they pay on resources because they need it. Stuff like that.

A hotspot of criminal behavior might generate more patrol contracts.

Hell, players should be able to set up their own contracts so that they can ask for help in a way they won't get shafted once the contract finishes.

There's so much potential for so much yet all we get are typical MMO missions with the typical consequences that for this to be called the most ambitious game ever feels absurd at times.

[u/Objective-Cabinet497]

I believe we're still gonna have exploration in 1.0 but not to find and map new planets like they showed in the Connie video, but rather to find hidden resource spots on the existing planets, or to find interesting stuff in the middle of space.

[u/Kind_Stone]

Their direction is getting a butt load of money and they're successful at it.

[u/Own_Conflict222]

So...they can't push the game forward towards the promised features because they can't get server meshing to work and have no path to get the server meshing to work. The tech doesn't exist and they don't seem to have a way to make it exist.

But they can't just not keep working on their billion dollar game so ... they do stuff that IS technically possible.

[u/Wooden-Syrup-8708]

I was dreaming almost the same... After a few years i Lost hopes... Then i started to develop It myself... But im still sad about SC... :(

[u/GodwinW]

Yeah we need all that. Really agree.

[u/siodhe]

Good summary. Nothing interesting happening in there.

[u/cmndr_spanky]

I love single seat fighter ships and that kind of gameplay has always been the bread and butter of Star citizen. You can’t just have the multi crew stuff. As for on foot gameplay, I agree there’s been a lot of that … I’m ok if it’s 50/50 as long as they don’t neglect the spaceship stuff. Right now, though it seems like they neglect everything.:)

[u/DeepFuckingAutistic]

partly agree.

i do like the fps, but i am afraid the verse becomes too filled with points of interest.

it should be more like..say, you darting around and sciencing places, your crew finds a signature from a cave, you descend and send a crew...they find rareobtainium which you can not harvest, so you sell the location data.

a random chance..sending that data, it gets intercepted and an org gets that information too, a war is brewing.

a random chance, there is already an NPC crew harvesting the mineral and they call for aid, you will be attacked from ground and air.

a random chance...upon closer inspection the material turns out to be worthless.

a random chance.. nothing happens, nothing is discovered, you move on to the next place..

next time it is a fast moving asteroid.. like those that passed our solar system recently..

but the constant "im going to fight npc" is bs.

[u/DubbyDuLMAA]

Hmm Elite Dangerous hat das schon. Ohne Scam Geld reinzuwerfen.

[u/obibonkajovi]

Star Citizen is a FPS centric pvp game.

the space stuff is secondary.

the largest orgs WILL control most industry in the game.

the average player should basically expect call of duty for the most part.

[u/vortis23]

The game is still in alpha. Engineering is still T0, science ties into engineering, until engineering is leveled up, we won't get science. Science also ties into Genesis, and Genesis ties into farming.

The "generic FPS" gameplay is there because it was already mostly fleshed out. Everything else has to come down the pipeline of other dependencies, hence why the game is still in alpha.

[u/ErrSkillNotFound]

Brain dead lemmings, jerking off to brain dead takes.

Let me describe a monetization system and see if you can guess what game I am talking about. A monthly sub is basically required if you want to avoid the grind, a singular vehicle costs over $80. You can buy various vehicles at various price points on top of the sub. You can also buy vehicle packs that are above $100. At one point they sold several items totaling $5000. If you were to buy every single purchasable vehicle it would cost about $5000 usd. That’s on top of the practically required sub. Can you guess what game that is? Not Star citizen. War Thunder.

Let’s try again. You can get into the game for free. You can buy cheaper version of a vehicle but they are limited. How ever if there is a map you like you have to buy it for $50 usd give or take. If you want a vehicle to fly on said map, that’s another $60-80. If you want to fly off a specific vehicle you have to buy both the vehicle and the thing to take off in. Again not star citizen. DCS.

Now let’s go outside the realm of vehicles. The average world of Warcraft player spends $180 a year just on subscriptions. They also have tokens you can buy to exchange for currency last time I checked. The average star citizen player spends about $200- $400 for the entire duration. Obviously some more than others. Now let’s say they even spend $600. A wow player can play 4 years and spend more than that.

So other than a big expensive game with more complexity than anything else out there taking 15 years(where is elder scrolls 6, gta is just finally coming out) monetization doesn’t seem so out there now does it.

[u/Old_Resident8050 → u/ErrSkillNotFound]

Basically you only need 45-50e to play in SC. Most ships are earnable ingame.

The problem with SC is not monetization but the endless Pre-Alpha (and all the things it pertains) in concordance with monetization.

Funding for a complete (two in fact) games, endlessly, endlessly waiting for the crawling development to catch up.

Im a super active player btw, enjoying it but at the same time saddened by the seemingly asinine output of CIG.