Retaliator Will Be On Sale Again -- Ben Lesnick (also: "No dates for anything ever ever again.")
Posted May 30, 2014, 11:50 PM UTC
2850
What they should start doing is: finish a build, announce the build is being released in a week without mentioning its already done, then release it early! Everyone loves CIG!!
14
It's been no secret that CIG likes money, and that ship sales = free money. Anyone who bought a ship without LTI on the gray market just hasn't been paying attention. I could link to dozens/(hundreds?) of comments (many from myself) saying that there WILL BE SHIP SALES again..
For those WITH LTI, though -- that's not necessarily a stupid move (although CIG has stated that it is -- the insurance/credits system likely hasn't even been typed up, much less designed/coded yet, so is always subject to massive change). It's up to the buyer to decide if the LTI is worth the extra money.
As for the "joke" - yes, he's probably joking.
6
I'm still hitting myself over the head for not grabbing a scythe. Nearly did but bills, damn you bills :(
I do have an Aurora lx, 350r and cutlass with lti though.
2
It's been no secret that CIG likes money, and that ship sales = free money.
There's absolutely no need to sound like a twat about it. The fact is they're running a business that's in its very early days, that could end up running one of the biggest MMOs to date. They have done a few minor things which erk me (The subscriber calendar thing) but the fact remains that, thus far, they are far from money grabbing.
They want money so they can make a kick-ass game, but that doesn't mean they're demanding you fork out £302847 for a subscription. In fact, the ships I've bought I'm happy with, the mousemats were insanely good quality, Jump Point is good value, and the Jump Point book was also good value. Do I feel they've grabbed money? No. Is that what everyone thinks? God no. Should I sound like an entitled twat in a Reddit comment section? No. Other people do it for me apparently.
tl;dr Get down off your high horse and understand how company financing works. They are literally selling a product to you.
-18
There's absolutely no need to sound like a twat about it.
Should I sound like an entitled twat in a Reddit comment section? No. Other people do it for me apparently.
tl;dr Get down off your high horse and understand how company financing works.
Wow. I'm not sure I can really address your "points" in response to my twatty comment:
It's been no secret that CIG likes money, and that ship sales = free money.
I'll try to not be so offensive next time with my harsh words about businesses liking money and having an easy source of said money.
11
Your a fucking idiot.
-6
You're*
12
rekt
2
He confirmed that all ships will be going on sale against the "Idris-not-P and the Scythe"
M-50 sale coming soon.
3
Did he specifically say M50? Maybe that means we'll finally get that update too.
edit
THE HABBENING
2
I'm guessing Ben's joking?
2
I hope he's not. I've yet to see a game developer that didn't come to regret giving a date for anything.
11
... or in CIGs case, giving MANY dates.
I'm hoping he's closer to correct than not and they are 99% sure next time they think about dropping dates.
6
On the other hand, developing without a delivery date-- no matter how mobile that date is-- has a habit of never finishing.
3
There could be internal delivery dates.
4
All of these demands concerning dates and asking CIG to rush out their product before it's even ready for effective alpha testing sounds to me like a vocal minority of backers essentially saying, "We want CIG to behave as if it had a publisher." That strikes me as... a bit odd.
2
So are getting games ever finished then? You don't even hear of 99,9999999 percent of all AAA games out there until six months prior to their release. What are the devs of all these games doing during the 18 to 24 months of production when no ones knows about their game?
1
Seriously hope he is not — thank the excessively vocal forumtards with zero patience.
3
Considering the community can't handle delays and the gaming press reports on them, the 'when it's done' approach seems to be the best at this point.
1
I mean I already have one, but if the Retaliator goes on sale again that means the Caterpillar might. Oh yeah, come to daddy.
2
They all will (other than Idris-M and Scythe).
3
My biggest regret is not picking up a Caterpillar when it was last on sale :(
2
Me too. Girlfriend and I had enough to get each other one big ship for Christmas over the winter sale. She forgot what day the Caterpillar sale was. I honestly can't complain because I got a Retaliator (which I love) but I would like to collect both :P
1
Shweeeeeeeeeet.
1
Is that an honest comment or a sarcastic joke? I don't see any smileys, so I assume it's an honest comment, but it wouldn't be the first time they make a little about "overly ouraged outrages", so I ask because it would be a great news if they would rethink their ETA policy.
1
Good idea on the dates given how pathetically childish people have been acting.
1
Nice! But uh... how about the merchantman?
1
Yes. All ships other than Idris-M and Scythe according to Ben.
2
Great. That means I'll have to decide between the 350r and the M50?
2
porquenolosdos.jpg
1
notengodinero.tiff
2
You know, I almost never post on reddit, but I had to go recover my password, just so I could log in to talk about this.
Allowing a developer to not have deliverable dates is a disaster. Anyone who actually ever worked in the software industry knows this, and if you try to deny it, you're probably lying about working in development.
No one is saying they have to have unreasonable dates, but they DO need to give deliverables and dates. Trust me when I say, if you tell a developer they have all the time in the world, your project will end up over budget, and horribly delayed.
This dates for the 29th had to have been given. I can guaranty you, had it not been given, we might not have seen AC until July probably. Which would have been all totaled, a delay of over 7 MONTHS.
In fact missing this deadline and having to work their butts off to get it out shortly after was exactly the kick in the pants they probably needed to get this stuff sorted out.
0†
I have worked in the software industry. I have even worked in game development. During the first year of any production I have been part off most ETAs where either missed by a couple of days because of a late show-stopper, or the build was delivered with the show-stopper after the producers and leads decided that there was enough working content to be tested (which is not an option for a public release for obvious reason).
By my first-hand experience as QA-specialist in the games industry you cannot pin down a reliable ETA at such an early stage of production, especially not when it is a public release. Therefore they shouldn't announce ETAs to the public. Don't worry, internally they still have deadlines, and they won't stop pushing things /by your logic it is a miracle that games ever get made because usually there is only public ETA - the final one that marks the release of the final product).
Which would have been all totaled, a delay of over 7 MONTHS
And you know why the release was pushed back, right? By the way, I find it funny how these numbers become bigger and bigger. I have even heard people saying that we are already two years behind schedule.
4
I believe it was to redo the whole netcode part of it, but I don't exactly sit back and follow the game.
From my point of view, I backed the game.. like 2 years ago or whatever it was. The hanger module was mostly on time. But well, then December rolls around, we have our first DFM Delay.
Ok things happen. I go back to other things, expecting the DFM some time in Q1. Well, Q1 pretty much finishes, and, wait... werent they suppose to release the DFM?
I catch the PAX demo on youtube. Ok, so it's going to be "shortly" after PAX. So I go back to other things.
Then, like a month later, still no DFM, So at this point I start to ACTIVELY pay attention to whats going on, because frankly, I put a lot of money into this, like everyone else, and regardless of what you think, when you take MONEY from your customers, you do have an obligation to provide them what you promised, in a timely manner.
So I check more often, because surely they have a release date soon, I mean, they said shortly after PAX.
Then CR says April 29th. Ok, finally, if they have given a date, they must mean it, because they havent ever given an exact date before.
Then of course, you know what happened next.
So YES the delays are getting bigger and bigger, and Im concerned, because if they cannot meet a deadline, that does not bode well for future updates, or their 2015 beta release.
0
Well, the plan was to release a "dummy" in December to attract more backers. Sine the game was already funded by then, CIG decided to cancel the "dummy" and release a module instead that was build on the custom made multiplayer-/MMO-infrastructure. If they would have released the proposed "dummy" in December, they would have spent the following months maintaining a module that would have never been part of the game. That was no "Ermahgerd! We will never make it on time!"-delay.
As for the situation since PAX East there are two problems:
1 - They made the Arena Commander bigger than it had to be for an initial release. Two modules would have been sufficient for a start, but they decided to make it bigger and more complex. And at this stage - when everything you add to the game is a "prototype" - bigger and complex means a much greater risk of things going wrong.
2 - The communicate and advertise their alpha-releases like final products. That has me pissed of for a while. When they advertise their releases, they talk about "Best Damn Space-Sim Ever!", but when things go wrong, we have to accept that we are still early in production. Which we are indeed. Therefore they simply should not advertise their releases like final products. They should not announce ETAs which, by my first-hand experience, can never be reliable at this stage.
Most people don't know that. Most people have no experience in game-development. They don't have the slightest idea how things work at this stage of a game production. So when the developers tells them "Hey, we release on May 29th, and you will be completely blown away by what we have to show you!", they have every right to believe, that the release will happen and that it will be amazing. And they every right to be disappointed, when the release gets delayed (again and again). And without better knowledge of game-development, it is no wonder that the people question the ability of the developers to release anything on time.
But trust me, there is no reason to be worried. I have worked on games that were far less ambitious than "Star Citizen" (and that were the fourth or fifth iteration of the same concept), and even these games have missed almost every deadline (or came with unexpected "last second show-stoppers") during the first year of production. The bug-list they have release has actually triggered some memories (especially the "camera bug"). Trust me, there is everything fine with the production at moment. It's their "marketing-blabla" that is inappropriate for the current stage of production. But apparently they have learned at least one lesson from the latest drama and won't announce ETAs anymore for future alpha- and beta-releases. That's the only honest thing to do.
2
So when CR said feature creep wasnt delaying the development of the game, he wasnt exactly being truthful?
1
They mean no public announcements. That doesn't mean they're throwing out internal roadmaps.
1
I still want to learn about approximate release dates because it helps keeps a perception of accountability on the part of the developers. This is important to maintain.
The population misunderstood the approximate May 29 release date, in Chris Robert's post on RSI's website, to be an ACTUAL and non-approximate release date. I cannot blame people for not understanding the basics of software development.
Additionally many people do not have a basic understanding of the general software development life-cycle. CIG has been absolutely clear that everything they are releasing so far are in active development and are not feature complete yet- thus they are in the early stages of development. They haven't even reached a feature complete Alpha build yet. Any person who has a basic understanding of software, product, or technological development would realize that deadlines will be missed to make important changes to the technology, product, or service when in early stages of development.
Since some people do not have a basic understanding of software development, then it is of paramount importance that the first public releases of any of their software is as bug free and as complete as much as possible.
1
Fuck yes fuck yes.....wait i don't have money
How much was the retaliator before?
around 250 I think
Do you really need a Retaliator? I am satisfied with my ship choice and all I'm doing is getting those skin packages to support CIG in my own way.
No but if i want to support they by buying one, is that wrong?
No...in fact, it could be argued that it's the only right motivation. Ship purchases are not intended to fuel a weird digital arms race before the game is released. They are simply fun, non-exclusive perks for supporting the developers.
Exactly, and I think the tali is perty