Star Citizen - free for a few days

Did you guys know about Star Citizen? I remember discovering them a long time ago but way back then there wasn't any real content and for some reason I got really mad at the devs. To be honest, I can't remember exactly why, but they were doing something bad...

Anyway, just stumbled on a random video by a youtuber I follow and it happens to be a free week if anyone wants to try it. It's still in a very alpha stage but I like the concept and so far it's fun. First impression is that it's almost like a more serious but a buggier and with less content No Man's Sky.

I will follow up in a few days after I get around to play some more. Funny, on my very first attempt to leave a space port, autopilot decided to kick in by itself and proceeded to fly me into a building

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/fly-now

 

I was reading up on it and most people are saying it's BUGGY AF and so incomplete. Kind of disappointing that after that much money (hundreds of millions) and time (10 years?) it's still a woefully incomplete buggy mess. Completely mismanaged by Chris "Scope Creep To Perfection *chef's kiss*" Roberts. I had a lot of hope for it in the early days but as it went along and keeping tabs on it and watching it be a complete cluster of a mismanaged product vision I've lost all hope and pretty much ignore everything about it at this point aside from the rare event like this. Then I go back in and start researching reactions and go back to ignoring it. Call me when it's an actual worth playing game.

Even the likes of Fallout 76 at launch time look like the best product ever in comparison.

 

I'm convinced Star Citizen was just an elaborate money laundering operation.

 

Yep, it's slowly starting to come back to me. The fact that they are selling over $1k game packages is a flag for sure. They keep saying that it's not pay to win, that you can actually get any of those ships in game too, but they don't tell you how long the grind would take...

It does feel extremely buggy and clunky. One thing stood out, when I left the starting planet for the first time, the skybox just looked strange, almost like very old graphics strange, like taking a picture of the night sky and wrapping it around on a ball...

 

Wow. And this is after 10 YEARS, granted they switched to LumberYard in late 2016.. still.. it's been an additional coming up on 4 years since then.

 

Sad. This seems to have so much potential and the whole idea is awesome but with how long this has been in development, some of the bugs really shouldn't be there. Also, while it does look nice, there really shouldn't be a reason for it to be running this slow on a 2080.

Just a few examples of major bugs I noticed in a mere few hours of gameplay:

- when leaving a starport, autopilot kicked in, overrode controls and crashed me in a building
- all NPCs in weird spots (standing motionless on tables/chairs)
- died when spawned in the game and pressed w to get out of the bed
- ship unavailable for retrieval, essentially leaving me stranded at a spaceport. Cool workaround here, asked in the chat for a lift and another random player took me to another spaceport where I could get my ship
- starmap display disappears randomly on certain zoom levels
- first recovery mission I tried, had to find a dead NPC in a cave on a planet. Got to the marked cave and no NPC anywhere in the cave. Lots of reports of these being bugged all the time.

I'll probably revisit this later but for now, I see no reason to support these devs.

 

Gave it one final shot last night:

- first login, woke up on my ship where I logged out last time only to find myself trapped with none of the doors opening.
- killed myself, logged back in, woke up at a space station, went to another cave search mission only to find myself trapped and unable to move between two random rocks.
- uninstall

 

Even after the buggy experience I've had for the few free days I've played it, somehow I kept thinking about this game. Can't explain it, probably just that the general idea is good and I could see myself enjoy exploring and doing missions over and over. To be honest, I actually considered paying for the cheapest package but thankfully I did do a bit more research on them.

Sad to say I now fully believe their whole plan is to run a very elaborate money making scam. After so many years, to have the game so buggy is inexcusable by itself, but then there's all the blatant lies to keep people giving them money. One clear example is Squadrton42, their advertised single player "experience". I couldn't believe when I learnt that they've been promising this since 2014 and then just go from one lie to another.

For anyone similarly having 2nd thoughts about this, just look at this video from around the 12:00 minute mark and use your money elsewhere. Don't waste it with these scammers.

 

LOL... that Cyperpunk 2077 thread got me interested in reading this again.

Hopefully CDPR doesn't keep pushing this out, but hey at least the money for Cyberpunk isn't coming from swindling backers with crazy unrealistic promises.

I will admit Star Citizen is a much larger and more complicated product vision than a Single Player open world RPG.

I've been back into Elite Dangerous for the last week. I needed my zen out exploration fix. After playing it for another ~10-15 hours It's already starting to drag me back into .. "that's all there is?". I have to admit I am liking the all new exploration and scanning mechanics. My Hauler that I have kitted out for exploration I just racked up a cool 2 mil in a one night run of about 50 hops. I also got this message from someone (I play in solo mode because I like to relax not deal with griefers) about "exploration" and I landed on my first planet base to check that out. I had to travel back like 39 hops to get to that place though... ugh...

It also seems like there's more stars you can scoop than there used to be? I recall running out of fuel and having to self destruct one time because I couldn't find a scoopable star closeby for multiple hops... Sorry don't mean to turn this into ED talk.

 

Somehow I missed Elite Dangerous completely but from what you describe it sounds somewhat similar to Star Citizen.

I'm a little better about keeping myself from buying it after I ran across a report of how much money they made over the years by selling imaginary ships for hundreds of real $ and getting away with lies about their progress with the game...

My fix for a space themed game for now is Mass Effect. I have to admit I actually haven't finished Andromeda back when it came out. As with many other games I like, I played it like crazy until I burned out and distracted myself with something else. I have no idea how long the story is, right now I'm at the point where I catch the hamster on the ship and just did Cora's loyalty mission. From around here it's all new to me.

I have to say that despite the bad rep it has, I am enjoying the story quite a lot. It doesn't bring back the same feelings as Mass Effect 1 did but it really is cool. Hopefully it doesn't end suddenly when I least expect it.

 

I never bought Andromeda based on all the bad reviews. It wasn't like I was completely taking them at face value some of those early youtube reviews were almost comical some of the things that were wrong with the game. But then I recall DA:I got a bad rap and I actually really enjoyed that once I sat down and dedicated to it and got past the Hinterlands. I'd probably enjoy Andromeda as well.

 

For some reason I decided to take another look at Star Citizen these days. I only played it last year during a free flight week and it just stayed in the back of my mind ever since. The whole idea behind it is amazing.

Despite all my common sense telling me to stay away and knowing fully that this is essentially a money milking scam game, I bought one of the game packages yesterday. I'd like to say that I was wrong and they've made progress and it's worth it but this is sooo not the case. On the very first start of the game, I'm stuck in the building I spawned in because the elevator is glitched. It's mind blowing how people are still throwing money at this game if such basic bugs still plague it after so many years in "development". Wait, I just did that too, lol.

I'll give it a few more tries and report back before the 2 week refund window closes.

One thing is clear, the devs are very good at marketing and making constant imaginary roadmaps with made up patch notes. They even brainwashed a few youtubers presenting the game constantly in a very misleading light.

 

No full-loot PVP = no love.

 

It's ironic, but I first heard about Star Citizen in 2013, when I was playing the old Star Lancer (or maybe it was Freelancer) game. I checked out Star Citizen's website and it said "releasing in summer 2014!" Boy, have that statement age poorly. I just can't trust Cloud Imperium Games.

 

Yep, the more you dig the worse they look. They keep hyping Squadron 42, post roadmaps, release dates and after a while, they start deleting all these and pushing it back. It's a deja vu for quite some years now.

The've earned well over 300 million $ and the game is in such a poor state that it makes no sense at all. Frame rate is terrible on a 2080, nowhere nearly as fluid as it seems on some youtube videos so you either need an extremely beefy computer, for a game with graphics from a few generations ago, or there's something shady going on there too.

Since about a year ago when I've played it during that free week, they actually removed a whole area from the game, yet it runs just as poorly and all the familiar bugs are still there. On the other hand, they keep releasing patches every 3 months with huge changelogs. I swear this looks too much like they're doing it on purpose. They see that people keep throwing money at imaginary ships and the game itself, so why actually improve it. Either this or they're just blatantly incompetent as game designers and just found a way to keep it in alfa and cash in.

 

No, just no...

I wanted to like this thing so much. Tried it for a few hours over the past days but after this many years in development, on a RTX2080 with 32Gb RAM it runs inexcusably slowly and most of the gameplay bugs I saw a year ago are still there (buggy NPCs, elevator glitches, clunky character movement, horrible star map interface, etc).

At this point I'm 100% convinced the devs have absolutely no plans of actually making this game. Their whole plan is to release regular patches to keep fans hooked with their lies. Most patches are like this: they break some things, add some more, remove others, and repeat this cycle.

I submitted the refund request. We should be well within the window in their policy so let's hope they honor it.

 

Just a short update on this: they processed the refund as soon as they got the request ticket. All good there.

One word of caution for anyone planning to try it. In the EULA that you accept when you buy a game package, they mention 14 days refund. It's pretty clear, I remember reading this before making the purchase, but on their website support FAQ section, they mention 30 days for the refund window. Just something to keep in mind.

Also, just before going ahead with the refund, I went in the game one last time and planned to walk around more of New Babbage. I think the game knew my intentions and decided to have some fun. I boarded the train and it went ahead and glitched the doors so they wouldn't open. The train did its thing, going from one stop to another without ever opening the door. So yeah, I killed myself and logged out

 

Sounds like the future of space flight and colonizing other worlds is BRIGHT AF.