I really don't get how all the youtubers and streamers always happen to find the one server that is actually working properly. Doesn't matter if I played at peak hours, off-peak hours or even degen hours, servers were always in the process of dying with AI never even responding and other players always teleporting around like crazy in every single mission of all 5 phases without exception. What could have been a fun mission chain became an annyoing weekly chore ridden with bugs that you had to slog through for the f7a upgrade, for which you need to first buy a 170€ ship in order to have any use for it in the first place. Most of the time you just sat there for hours waiting for the missions to pop up or spamming the chat for invites to groups who managed to get the one mission per server.
It's always hit or miss. Add lots of friends to your friends list so you'll have a big selection of servers to pick from. I jumped in a very low pop server and the bunker missions with the server hacking had me shot to shit super quick. ❤
In fairness he did call out bad server performance as the biggest issue but as it isn't actionable feedback for the mission design itself he was ignoring it.
@@Super-id7bq yeah I know and this wasn't meant as critizism against the video or him by any means but he has footage of stuff actually working, even in a larger group with responsive AI and players not teleporting all over the place which I haven't had in any of the missions. SPK was more about not accidentally shooting players rubberbanding infront of you than fending off the AIs.
"The AI in this video didn't seem to be functioning properly either. It's so frustrating that I don't even bother playing it. I do appreciate the fact that streamers have the time and patience to deal with it though. Personally, I just enjoy watching how things are improving."
I 100% agree with you about the rewards, when I saw that the reward was an upgrade to a ship ill have to buy I moved on. It feels like a slap in the face tbh
For that very reason I only participated in 2 bunkers in phase 1 bc some friends wanted extra support. From that evening on it's been Right Bracket Decline as hard as a keystroke is able to convey. If you want me to participate, you need a REWARD. An opportunity to buy something is NOT a REWARD. I'm glad people had fun doing this but honestly, as you said, the "reward" is fkin insulting.
You also get some Xenothreat armor added to your account. For a newer player that doesn't already have a bunch of accounts armors, that's a pretty big deal. I love collecting unique armors from these events, so it was worth it for me
I tried it for something to do. I couldn't complete 1st phase due to npc spawn issues.Did 3rd phase even with its glitch issues where i had to wait for someone else to be sent to the mission sight to spawn more targets. Anyone able to complete , grats.
The reward is lame, and the sheer amount of effort required to complete all these - considering it almost exclusively requires coordinating with others for multi play, makes it very difficult for a causal player like me who occasionally has time to pop into the game, never mind try to coordinate everything.
CIG should have stated that the F7CmkII will be an optional reward from SQ42, I think that would have been a good idea. Either that or the token will give a 75% discount on the store price on top of the upgrade to F7A spec.
I feel like SC only ever really does special events to make more money. Yeah we have normal Xenothreat, and such... but everything else, everything that isn't an already routine thing happening, genuinely only feels like CIG (or their marketing team) cares about doing "lti quests" to give us the honor of giving them EVEN MORE money than we already do. the new F7A quest-line, the Idris event, the Lightning event, all only made to sell a ship
I thought it was a fun event. I wish I could just complete these at my leisure. Not everyone can afford to spend hours every week. Missions tying together and branching storylines is 100% the direction they should go for all missions. Do a bounty hunter mission and find mysterious map coordinates that leads you to more money. A game of this scale needs more acting and dialog. Game is too quiet. I want amazing cinematic experiences that feel epic.
SQ42 is what you seem to be talking about. Which is their single player game they are making. We are going to hear (big maybe) about it's possible release date this next citizencon
when I played Elder Scrolls Online, once every 2 years or so, they would release an event that gave players a new free house worth around 120$. Eventually down the line, they would re-release those houses for sale for the players that missed the events. I think CIG can do the same concept of releasing a free Ship worth around 100$ for players participating in time limited event. and if they want to make extra buck they can put it on sale years later.
I was going to leave a comment about ESO as well. They give away a lot of stuff, and give players a lot of opporunities to pick up other things for free with seals of endeavour and crown gems. Seeing CIG act in such a greedy way is a concerning insight into what we may see in a 1.0 release.
The Hornet sale really soured me to this event. I've been a backer for 9 years now and I'm a couple grand into it because I love the idea of the project, but more and more it feels like those early dollars I spent are worthless. I still follow progress but I haven't played nearly as much recently.
Same. I think ship sales are a catch 22 for the dev teams. Their business relies on ship sales but at the same time they need to progress with the game, whilst designing more ships, whilst squashing bugs whilst improving the ships. It's not sustainable and a line must be drawn.
@@polla2256 Not to mention that for PR they have to release many premium ships to be available for in-game currency, as if they intend to sell the game at full price, IE 30-70 USD, being percieved as Pay-to-Win has the potential of driving away massive numbers of customers.
Same feeling, i didnt spent thousands but around 900€ back in 2013 !!! and i feel like they dont care anymore that we were the people from the beginning. No rewards, no specials, nothing. I could very well have started no and buy a ship for ~300 € and i would be just as fine. Its a bummer really.
I hate to be negative because I know this was CIs first big run at something like this (at least in terms of scope) and I am sure there was no small amount of work that went into it. That being said, I hated Overdrive. I really did, I had an unusual amount of bad luck with it. Not one single mission ever went well, I was constantly plagued with server crashes at the worst moments, poor performance/lag/desynch/bugged missions, falling through the terrain- you name it and I dealt with it. Then there was the element of herding cats for missions... I mean, getting groups together. Look, not all of us do orgs so just trying to get a group together, keep them together and dealing with their bullsh*t (constant smoke breaks, crying kids, being high, not following orders, waiting forever for them to arrive) was exasperating if not outright painful. The design of the missions left a lot to be desired too - whether it was doing the same thing multiple times, having to constantly travel from one end of the system to the other, only making the mission available to some people while everyone else waits. I just didn't have any fun with this and came to dread Fridays. And now this news that some people might have had their progress not tracked on CI's end... If I somehow get cheated out of my Hornet upgrade after all that I'm going to freak out. CI should be prepared to just give people the damn upgrade if there is a gap in their mission progress on their end - the fallout of them even being perceived as ripping people off could be insane and be all over the media. Besides, like Morph said, the reward is for the opportunity to spend more money so who cares at this point. Frankly, I would have preferred to just buy the damn upgrade outright and save myself from 5 weeks of pain. They also really need a better way for fans to be able to track their own progress, the tool in our tracker was poor to the point of uselessness. Bottom line is this - from a technical perspective, the game can't handle these kind of events right now. Also, they need to do a serious post-mortem and do better with mission design. Not just in the way the missions are rolled out and tracked, but being more considerate of the different playstyles of the people playing their game.
Phase 5 was awful. I had to do it 7 times due to bugs. I did all the missions solo except for the last mission of Phase 1 and Phase 4A. The ships were easy to kill in phase 5, but I could not defeat the bugs. When I finally beat it, there was no planet surface. The only thing I could land on was a rock that was a part of the "crashed ship" entity. On one of my attempts, I got the boxes back to the Pyro jump station and fell through the elevator into space. I was floating around outside the station, and I was so pissed off. Then another time the box jumped out of my hand and fell through the ground. I then took my ship out of the hanger and picked up the box floating in space. While I was getting THAT box, the other ones disappeared. Yeah. I was pissed.
One of the things about morphs videos I am always impressed by is that he somehow manages to get daytime for most of his planet-side mission. The rest of us peasants always stuck in the dark.
I don't know why you have issue with cig putting the box mission in the end -- they clearly stated xenothreat incursion will be happen at pyro jump point right after stage 5, so you have it -- epic space combat at pyro jump point (with FPS combat onboard Idris) as finale to this event.
Because the events had been escalating in scope and scale pretty consistently, only to cap it off with a slightly altered starter mission. For the 'finale' you're talking about, we're going to have to wait several weeks outside the release pace of the rest of the mission to fly through an event with legendarily poor performance, do it on the new flight model instead of as a "last hurrah" for the current one, *and* do it on a fresh major patch.
I had a lot of issues with this, a combo of boxes not spawning, players griefing, broken NPCs… Make all the missions you want CiG, it’s hard to play them when the game is fundamentally still a broken alpha. I really hope we see a playable and not embarrassing game to try and get friends to join in 2025/2026… if not, I honestly might sell my few ships… I’ll give them another ‘2 years’ as they always say… but this time unlike Chris, I am serious. I really want this game to succeed in a time where nothing else is even attempting this, but we can’t wait forever
@@teddypicker8799 i’ve been playing a lot of older games (5th/6th gen) and mods for said games, and while they are great… they aren’t massive online multiplayer space games… nothing else comes close to what CiG is trying, and I have yet to see a game in 2024 I want to actually play. So I really hope CiG does well eventually, because modern gaming really sucks!
I think they should have had a reward for each phase completed. Maybe bespoke paint pistol for completing the first phase, a bespoke paint smg for completing the second phase, limited edition back pack for completing the third, the armor set for completing the fourth and maybe a couple of different ship liveries, of which you could pick one for your fleet for completing phase five? Like a cool civilian defense force livery for either the F7C Mk.II or an Anvil Valkyrie. I'm just trying to complete phase 2, but the drop boxes don't seem to want to take the encryption keys. I've run the second mission of phase 2 around three times already. It's frustrating as hell.
These missions are well put together. I only wish there were some single player missions that gave awards. I don't have a group of people to play with.
same, especially beginner focused single player missions. Loading up in a starter ship it felt like you were facing a grind wall to do anything fun. A few introductory missions to different gameplay loops with some reward (even if its cash) would go a long way.
I agree with you on that point. Though, for the past couple of weeks on just about every server I've played on there's always been a handful of people looking for a party to play the missions with :)
I did all of the missions except the first one as a 'solo'. I just asked for help in the chat and almost always got an instant reply. Someone is always glad to help.
I've played this with whoever wanted my help on the server. I've done every part multiple times because they're fun and indeed to help people who normally play solo to be able to complete them. The game as a whole is always much more fun played with at least one friend. People tell me it's a PVP game but in my experience it is more a co-op game than anything else
@morphologis, I appreciate what you are saying about the phase 5, but the ships that spawned in and attacked you were natural spawns brought in prior to this patch. They spawn when you enter the region of a wreck site. I have video evidence of this behavior at wreck sites prior to any of this event being public. Currently, AI police and AI pirates will spawn in. In particular, you will often see reclaimers, starfarers, valkyries and cutlasses. With that knowledge, a number of smaller orgs have been making salvage money by taking advantage of these spawns. Reach out if you want to see recordings or take a number of missions that take you to wreck sites across hurston.
I can appreciate the scale and effort that CIG placed into the event(s). I don't do any PvE/PvP type of game play but I was interested in the MK II. However, that's as far as it will ever go, even if I was willing to buy in, because I would not be able to meet the criteria to get the upgrade token. I did get a CCU to the F7C Hornet Mk II just in case something came along that I could participate in to get the military version (dogfighting centric). I concur that most everything was pretty well handled except the reward aspect of the event.
I wound up not trying the event because of the announced 'reward' of being able to spend more money. The concept reminded me of the F8 lighting event as well as the capture the Idris event, neither of which seemed particularly fun to me. In hindsight, the event does look like it was fun to participate in, but they really need to step up their marketing. The goal should be to get as many people into the game as possible, including the ones that aren't going to spend cash on upgrades. Those people are who make valuable ships valuable simply by increasing their rarity. The upgrade option would've been far more effective as a marketing tool if it was granted _upon_ _completion_ of the event. It would encourage the people who would've wanted that upgrade to participate in _all_ future events hoping that the upgrade would 'drop' again.
I would like to see some cargo mission again. We did have those missions where you had to deliver supplies to a blocaded station, and IMO it could be included within this set too.
I agree with you, regarding the idea of fighting our way into FPS missions. If there are patrol ships, exterior guards, and maybe even AA weapons, the whole thing gets more unilaterally engaging. If they’re calling in reinforcements there, even better. Finally, a use for dropships! I felt this most acutely at Kareah. As soon as I had that thought, I figured it had to be an issue of server load - and something that server meshing would solve. I bet that’s one of the first things we get, as soon as servers can dynamically shift authority.
Making Phase 5 a "respite" mission is pretty funny. It's literally the most frustrating, given it's a single mission per server. Opens up to easy griefing and the bugs just add to it. I was very fortunate that my first try, the mission holder invited the whole server into a group and no bugs happened. It also doesn't respect peoples' time. Working a job and having a family, made this while endeavor like pulling teeth.
Cig needs to start giving away free ships for these events. Just for the publicity alone. Do a ship for like 100-200$ first then go with a dragonfly or something similar. These events should be limited to 2 weeks and take 3-9 days to complete depending how hardcore/casual you are
On one of phase 5 runs, I actually did run into NPCs on the ground. I don't think they were Xenothreat so don't know what was going on but surprised the hell out of us. Nobody was carrying any weapons, but luckily we were tooling around in a Hammerhead so we were able to completely overkill the poor sods
Completely agree with your points related to the rewards. Can't comment on the fun aspect of the missions as I chose not to participate for two reasons: 1) I'm a solo SC player and it looks like a group was needed to complete most of the missions, and 2) even if I decided to join a group to complete the missions, I wasn't planning on buying the new Hornet so the reward for completing the event would have been useless to me. One can only hope that CIG will keep adding new chained mission events for group play but also for solo players that make it worthwhile to participate. As for ship selling to fund the project, I'm not against it and think if they just keep releasing new ships the backers will buy them (no need for the game-souring types of tactics like the new Hornet upgrade reward). Also consider a second revenue stream that I feel is underutilized. If only CIG gave us a way to recover lost/stolen cosmetics paid for with money, more people would spend more money on vanity items which would boost revenues. There are a lot of free-to-play games out there that have been making obscene amounts of money from selling skins.
Another great video. I enjoyed most of the initiative, including the parts that I was able to solo. I can say that phase 4 was also my favorite. I am one who actually bought the new Hornet, and I am glad I did as I might not have been motivated to join the initiative otherwise, and it worked well in phases 2-4.
I think they could make something really nice out of giving out ship rental tickets as mission rewards. Like a ticket that if you turn it in you get a certain ship for a certain time, but you can store the ticket for as long as you want without it getting used up. If you build the mission economy around it I could see this beeing a very fun way to soft-lock people in progress and reward you for staying with a certain mission giver. Imagine as an example redwood delivery giving you an important, special delivery after you completed enough normal, simple box deliveries. As a reward for this level up mission you'd get a 6hour rental ticket for a hull A and the new level of missions would now require you to haul bigger boxes for which you need a Hull A or equivalent ship. How handy that you just got a rental ticket to use said ship without a problem. Now these new missions would from time to time also give you such a pass (or maybe each missions gives a 1h rental pass) in addition to the cash rewards. Goal would be that a player can keep renting the ship as part of their natural mission progression and can easily switch between mission paths "today I cash in my bounty hunter ticket from last week and play some bounty hunter missions, tomorrow I'll do the hauling,..." without needing to buy each and every ship permanently. To keep the tickets from beeing flooded the shops might also just trade them in for cash at usual "MMO vendor buys your trash drops" percentages of their actual buying price. Would also be nice if we could buy and trade such tickets. Want to invite a friend to fly wingman but don't trust them with your own ship? Just buy a 6h hornet rental and give it to them.
I have the same issue with unlocking the ability to buy the pirate gladius and catepillar from doing pirate swarm. Like, yay, I unlocked the ability to spend $100+ more dollars. Now, if it unlocked a special in game shop where you could buy it with in game credits, that would be the way to go with both the pirate stuff and this event.
I sometimes think that bringing all those crytek devs onto the team was one of the worst things that ever happened to SC. They brought with them a detailed understanding of how to build a first person shooter, and now that's what we have in place of the space sim we were supposed to get.
As someone who did spend the money for the event, those minor details felt like bigger problems because they made me wonder if the event was complete and now that I’ve completed it I just hope and pray that my account actually got credit for completing it.
did almost all phases with like 10-20 random people at the end it felt like we had all the people in the server in 1 party for phase 5, the only one i did solo was phase 2
The last mission was terrible due to the bugs. I probably ran through it 5 times before getting it to work, and it wasn't even the same bug every time. First time the cargo center dropoff was bugged, the second time the admin center dropoff was bugged, 3rd, 4th, and 5th time the ammunition crate was not interactible. Only reason we didn't have more dropoff bugs is because we just server hopped until we found dropoffs that work.
I was entirely not interested in the original 'reward', but did enjoy the missions. I finished all but the Kareah one solo and even that one almost. I got shot through the walls or I would have made it. The 'fleet battle' one was a joke. Even when I was on site within minutes, I never saw more than 4 enemies remaining and dozens of players. Making it server-wide was questionable. The final box mission was an exercise in frustration. Took me three days to finally be able to get one that wasn't bugged with boxes missing at pickup, not being able to deliver them and getting a crimestat for shooting the attacking ships at the pickup site
I appreciate your viewpoint, but to get access to a rare ship and it be a free CCU, as opposed to the F8 Lightning where you had to purchase it outright, is pretty awesome as a reward from my point of view. Maybe not everyone likes collecting rare ships, but there is a decent part of the community of backers that really appreciate earning rare stuff. They could improve it further by allowing people who earn the CCU to be able to purchase the F7A in-game, so it doesn't have to be real money (but then that in-game version should be really expensive to represent it's rarity).
I was personally excited for the reward since I'[m planning an upgrade path for my starter package ship. Howver, I ended up not doing any of the event really bc I found it too difficult to connect with other players to complete the missions and soloing them just really wasn't possible with a starter ship. Wish SC had a "matchmaking" system or "SOS" feature to missions that made it easier for players without any other friends who play SC to connect with other players in game.
I think they need to work on in game ships being available through reputation. Then they could make the reward for completing Overdrive the reputation to purchase the F7Amk2 in game.
I enjoyed the missions, obtw there is still one more coming. Number six is still out there… On mission five I actually had to shoot down one of the NPC ships as they had the packages on board the cutty black instead of the starfareer. Still not sure how that happened, but doing that solo was fun.
That's why I like to watch Morph: because he say what I have been thinking this whole time, since the launch of the event. That's also why I didn't participate in it, btw.
Thanx for an other great video Morph. I love the vision behind SC and I am a backer for quite some time BUT i am not able to play it anymore, until AI and server issues will be improved. Even the location sync of party members is sooooo bad … that i prefer playing Kebab Chefs 😂
I feel like gaining major account rewards based solely on progress over time in an alpha environment always seemed odd... With so many people saying progress is backsliding, or not counting, I feel like that kind of thing is way less concrete than the "drop" based golden ticket situation.
Star Citizen being oblivious and unable to read the room should've been obvious when that brit showed up on SCLive and said he was surprised at how much players wanted road tech.
hi Morphologist, as someone who always wanted to play star citizen but was unable to due to various reasons such as a lack of story related missions I feel like it is time to actually play the game since they have added more content
i wll sit on the f7a upgrade until they lock in the ships (before beta?) and then upgrade a random ship of a game package to the f7cmk2 just in time to have the f7a
CIG doesn't do a good job of informing players what the mission is. In "Priority Targets" I thought the mission was exactly what you proposed- board a ship and get a key, which would have been awesome. But that meant that I spent a lot of time trying NOT to destroy the target ships. In "Intel Raid" nothing really tells you that you have to reset the servers or how to do it- it's very easy to not notice a little message on an unimportant panel, so you end up having to try that first mission three times to figure it out. It's all very annoying.
It's the server performance and instability that makes me not want to do these, as I have a few hours to play something each day, and one of those setbacks can mean I achieve nothing. I look forward to doing these missions, once those issues are sorted.
I gave up on this project recently. After 10 years and thousands contributed they decided to prioritize PTU access to subscribers over concierge. I feel that as a long time backer I was shafted.
It was a lot of fun and reason to get org connections together. There is plenty of lone wolf content but fewer reasons to get groups together and that was the purpose of this mission set. XT is one of my favorite events and glad it's getting some iteration. Server tech was the biggest hinderance but that is the same for any mission. I don't really care about them tying a ship sale to an event as long as there is some other in game award to balance it out even if it's just flair or a forum badge. Devs and server time in datacenters with big pipe internet access on 4 continents is not free. Do you think SC would have succeeded if everyone had to pay 15usd per month to play?
I wish they let us keep one Mantis Helmet if we Aquire it during the mission like the Halloween Vanduul mask event. That would’ve been a cool in-game reward. The Xt medium armour is less valuable for me at least.
I have been unable to complete any of these missions. They kept timing out or there were not enough players working on the same mission. I only been killed by one friendly player once during the bunker raid and I didn't want to charge him. These are not missions for lone solo players.
I understand what they are trying to do and the state of the game is still in development and they have to fund that. But with that being said, with limited-timed events they should give people a ship or something for Free for participating. I understand that this is a massive ask and stretch, but events are only fun when the reward is actually worth something. That's just my opinion though and i know many will probably disagree.
Did two of the first missions untill i found out that the reward was that they let me spend more money i dont have on something i dont want. Really looked forward to xenothreat at first but havent played since the first missions now..
Play the game to earn the RIGHT to upgrade a ship to a rarer version of that ship. Oh but you gotta buy the ship itself first. For real money. Then do the entire event.
I think I wouldve been ok with the rewards if they let me use the ship for the whole duration of the event tbh. I get that they want us to get excited for the new ship but give me a reason to buy it dont just hang it above my head with a paywall
LoL, But Morph, this thing isn't over!! the FINAL happens when 3.23 drops to Live, when the main Xenothreat Mission takes place. Now had they waited and did this whole Xenothreat thing from start to finish IN 3.23, it might have been something, but to put the majority of the thing in 3.22 only for the Finale to be in 3.23........... a misstep in my view.
Eh, I tried to make the very first, some aholes were camping at SPK so I couldn't. Emergent gameplay I guess, no lawful NPCs to break this kind of grief. Back to making stuff in deep space without talking to anyone to avoid losers.
Sadly this was really painful to do if you didnt have a large group of friends or an org around. Tried it solo and with another friend and it was impossible.
xenothreat is a human supremacist terror group that is against aliens. the humans are the threat. the xeno's (and people friendly to them..aka.. sane people) are the targets.
It's such a shame so much of this game is hamstrung by server performance and networking. I just hope folks can hold on until they get it sorted. They seem to finally be testing the server meshing tech they need to make all this work.
Feel like you missed the part where the end of the chain leads into Xenothreat event, so wouldn't the box mission be a good "rest" before the finale? I think it's fine. As it's the calm before the storm of the finale that is the big xenothreat event (which I think they also changed?) Also, as a long time backer Star Citizen has ZERO reason to promote the fact they are a game now...because they aren't. The only thing I WANT to do when I do log on is fly around, enjoy the pretty vistas, and take pictures. That's it, and that will continue to be it till progress isn't being wiped every other quarter. The game needs dozens of chains like this to even reach a launch minimum viable product and it has zero. Just a bunch of filler missions with no setpieces, dungeons, etc. It's also an EVENT chain...not a quest chain. The only thing it has are "events" which are only a tool to sell ships, not to really be any meaningful consistent gameplay WHEN they ever work. I really think the team has no business marketing this as a game because it really isn't one yet, it's still a tech demo with a few test subject missions that may or may not work depending on the build. This Overdrive initiative is a nice model for future use of "quest chains" to make the game feel better (hopefully with a procedural element to shake up order and type so you aren't just doing Overdrive Initiative over and over every week as some kind of repeating weekly event chain or something)....but it won't turn this game around 180. End of the day, Star Citizen is JUST NOW starting to build meaningful quest design and it's going to be a couple of years till they really SHOULD market this as a game because it's still just a screenshot simulator where you can screw around with friends and roleplay at best. The game itself still isn't there and it's so timesink heavy anyone told to come play would be smacked in the face with a 2 hour game session where they accomplish very little with the understanding all their effort will get erased come 4.0 anyway...let alone 5.0 or 1.0 or launch. Until getting into a location isn't just an elevator but a hacking mini-game, a power supply mini-game, into a combat scenario, into a ship combat sequence...the quest design isn't actually doing what they are selling with things like SQ42. These quest chains are necessary to achieve that...but fundamentally still don't actually do enough in this T0 state (because evrything is still T0) If the want to sell the game AS IS? They need more locations...period. If it's a screenshot simulator in the vein of Microsoft Flight Simulator but with a bit more gameplay? Then give us more things to see...but until that watershed the games abysmal ramshackle gameplay is just not going to attract anyone but the most wallet fat or idealistic gamers with heavy duty hardware. I'd gladly log back in to explore Pyro and Nyx and Odin...but those aren't options. I'm stuck in the most milquetoast system in the verse where the cities are just strip malls. If they want to bring players back...they really need to focus on pumping out as much visual and aesthetic content as possible, imo. I won't be coming back for salvage, because it isn't fun. I won't be coming back for Overdrive, because it's broken. I will be coming back to fly around Pyro and vibe while I check out what the procedural planets/tile system can manifest in beautiful locations while I listen to music. Which is such a wild thing to still be saying in 2024 for this game but it's just nowhere near being in a position to sell gameplay. SQ42 can sell gameplay. SC needs to sell playing in a shared space with friends with an abundance of beautiful locations...and because they decided to gate EVERYTHING behind servermeshing related to that...well...they are going to hit a wall. When we start seeing a new system every half year (small systems not something like Terra)...I really don't see this game surviving on its gameplay until servers are absurdly polished and the game is bugless AND progress is saved.
hey morph. on battles happening near the jump point I have to disagree with the logic that they are coming from the jump point. I think a terrorist group could not cross that jumppoint with their fleet as the first line of defence. they would either come as individuals through the jumppoint and build up a fleet in Stanton or they would have to gain control over the jump points defences before coming over
There’s a thing in lore for this actually. The main jump point is constant and fixed, but around it randomly appear smaller temporary jump points that can be located using specialized ships like the Carrack. This isn’t in the game yet, but I’d imagine they would use those temporary ones. We could then get random locations in the cloud to have to defend and it would satisfy the lore perfectly.
I have done all the missions, it was all good except the buggy mess that was phase 5. But in all its fun and there is a nice reward. I mean would done it for armor alone. Looking forward for more ingame things like these ones.
I haven't bothered to do any Overdrive missions. The "reward" is worthless to me since I'll never be able to afford an F7C Mk 2, and the reported bugginess of the missions didn't sound fun.
As you said, the focus should be making a great game. More and more it seems CIGs main focus is keeping this money printer running, then maybe make a game.
I love how you don't even mention credit reward because of how inconsequential they are. There is a big issue in the game with mission rewards in general. Most missions, including the event, either aren't worth the time and efforts you spend doing them, or have such a low reward that they aren't worth doing altogether. This problem is going to be exacerbated with the upcoming changes to the economy and the massive price rises. And yeah obviously, going through these missions, some of which were seriously a pain because of bugs or bad design, all for the opportunity to spend more money, is really lame. It works though, given how many people are buying the Mk.II and doing them, but still, for new players there's really nothing of value to be had here.
My personal take is that I loved it. Me and a group of friends play every Friday evening and for us this was something to look forward to. We didn't get any horrible bugs; we were able to smoothly complete all phases. The reward was the mission itself and the CCU and armor is just bonus. Some of us purchased the F7C Hornet Mk2 because we like it and are looking forward for the F7A upgrade while some others bought it just as a steppingstone in a CCU chain while others didn't buy the Mk2 and will be happy to get a free CCU. More than half of our group are Concierges, and we just enjoy the game for what it is as even for those of our group that do not care for the Hornet Mk2 still loved going through Overdrive together. If for some weird reason the Hornet Mk2 as well as the F7A CCU would get deleted from everything we still wouldn't feel like we wasted our time. It was genuine fun and that's the reward. The rest is extra. You have a fair point with the event reward being more about the game than the sales but at the same time, Overdrive was the first of what CIG is hoping for many. They know a ship to purchase for every of this event is not viable to attract players so I think it's safe to assume that future Overdrive-type events will yield more in-game rewards, and this will become increasingly interesting as we cross the 1.0 version threshold.
The new star map has been added to the 3.23 EPTU and haven't heard anything being glitchy, so we SHOULD (tm) see it in-game probably around.... May-ish
I havent tried the missions yet but i do agree that the reward was very amateurishly implemented. The ones that decided this seems to be completely out of touch with the outside worlds perception of the game. (and us the backers) They NEED to be thinking of these things now that the game is on its way to 1.0.
I really don't get how all the youtubers and streamers always happen to find the one server that is actually working properly. Doesn't matter if I played at peak hours, off-peak hours or even degen hours, servers were always in the process of dying with AI never even responding and other players always teleporting around like crazy in every single mission of all 5 phases without exception.
What could have been a fun mission chain became an annyoing weekly chore ridden with bugs that you had to slog through for the f7a upgrade, for which you need to first buy a 170€ ship in order to have any use for it in the first place. Most of the time you just sat there for hours waiting for the missions to pop up or spamming the chat for invites to groups who managed to get the one mission per server.
Yeah I don't think I had working ai ever for these missions.
It's always hit or miss. Add lots of friends to your friends list so you'll have a big selection of servers to pick from. I jumped in a very low pop server and the bunker missions with the server hacking had me shot to shit super quick. ❤
In fairness he did call out bad server performance as the biggest issue but as it isn't actionable feedback for the mission design itself he was ignoring it.
@@Super-id7bq yeah I know and this wasn't meant as critizism against the video or him by any means but he has footage of stuff actually working, even in a larger group with responsive AI and players not teleporting all over the place which I haven't had in any of the missions. SPK was more about not accidentally shooting players rubberbanding infront of you than fending off the AIs.
"The AI in this video didn't seem to be functioning properly either. It's so frustrating that I don't even bother playing it. I do appreciate the fact that streamers have the time and patience to deal with it though. Personally, I just enjoy watching how things are improving."
I 100% agree with you about the rewards, when I saw that the reward was an upgrade to a ship ill have to buy I moved on. It feels like a slap in the face tbh
For that very reason I only participated in 2 bunkers in phase 1 bc some friends wanted extra support. From that evening on it's been Right Bracket Decline as hard as a keystroke is able to convey.
If you want me to participate, you need a REWARD.
An opportunity to buy something is NOT a REWARD.
I'm glad people had fun doing this but honestly, as you said, the "reward" is fkin insulting.
You also get some Xenothreat armor added to your account. For a newer player that doesn't already have a bunch of accounts armors, that's a pretty big deal. I love collecting unique armors from these events, so it was worth it for me
I tried it for something to do. I couldn't complete 1st phase due to npc spawn issues.Did 3rd phase even with its glitch issues where i had to wait for someone else to be sent to the mission sight to spawn more targets. Anyone able to complete , grats.
The reward is lame, and the sheer amount of effort required to complete all these - considering it almost exclusively requires coordinating with others for multi play, makes it very difficult for a causal player like me who occasionally has time to pop into the game, never mind try to coordinate everything.
CIG should have stated that the F7CmkII will be an optional reward from SQ42, I think that would have been a good idea.
Either that or the token will give a 75% discount on the store price on top of the upgrade to F7A spec.
I feel like SC only ever really does special events to make more money. Yeah we have normal Xenothreat, and such... but everything else, everything that isn't an already routine thing happening, genuinely only feels like CIG (or their marketing team) cares about doing "lti quests" to give us the honor of giving them EVEN MORE money than we already do. the new F7A quest-line, the Idris event, the Lightning event, all only made to sell a ship
Don't forget that 3.23 will bring in the main incursion from Xenothreat
I thought it was a fun event. I wish I could just complete these at my leisure. Not everyone can afford to spend hours every week. Missions tying together and branching storylines is 100% the direction they should go for all missions. Do a bounty hunter mission and find mysterious map coordinates that leads you to more money. A game of this scale needs more acting and dialog. Game is too quiet. I want amazing cinematic experiences that feel epic.
They probably will, but these kinds of missions are what will bring people back more often.
SQ42 is what you seem to be talking about. Which is their single player game they are making. We are going to hear (big maybe) about it's possible release date this next citizencon
when I played Elder Scrolls Online, once every 2 years or so, they would release an event that gave players a new free house worth around 120$. Eventually down the line, they would re-release those houses for sale for the players that missed the events.
I think CIG can do the same concept of releasing a free Ship worth around 100$ for players participating in time limited event. and if they want to make extra buck they can put it on sale years later.
I was going to leave a comment about ESO as well. They give away a lot of stuff, and give players a lot of opporunities to pick up other things for free with seals of endeavour and crown gems. Seeing CIG act in such a greedy way is a concerning insight into what we may see in a 1.0 release.
That would be a great model for SC
The Hornet sale really soured me to this event. I've been a backer for 9 years now and I'm a couple grand into it because I love the idea of the project, but more and more it feels like those early dollars I spent are worthless. I still follow progress but I haven't played nearly as much recently.
Same. I think ship sales are a catch 22 for the dev teams. Their business relies on ship sales but at the same time they need to progress with the game, whilst designing more ships, whilst squashing bugs whilst improving the ships. It's not sustainable and a line must be drawn.
@@polla2256that’s what SQ42 is for
100%. Eve if it was a much smaller ship, it would have been so much better if the reward was a free ship.
@@polla2256 Not to mention that for PR they have to release many premium ships to be available for in-game currency, as if they intend to sell the game at full price, IE 30-70 USD, being percieved as Pay-to-Win has the potential of driving away massive numbers of customers.
Same feeling, i didnt spent thousands but around 900€ back in 2013 !!! and i feel like they dont care anymore that we were the people from the beginning.
No rewards, no specials, nothing.
I could very well have started no and buy a ship for ~300 € and i would be just as fine.
Its a bummer really.
I hate to be negative because I know this was CIs first big run at something like this (at least in terms of scope) and I am sure there was no small amount of work that went into it.
That being said, I hated Overdrive. I really did, I had an unusual amount of bad luck with it. Not one single mission ever went well, I was constantly plagued with server crashes at the worst moments, poor performance/lag/desynch/bugged missions, falling through the terrain- you name it and I dealt with it. Then there was the element of herding cats for missions... I mean, getting groups together. Look, not all of us do orgs so just trying to get a group together, keep them together and dealing with their bullsh*t (constant smoke breaks, crying kids, being high, not following orders, waiting forever for them to arrive) was exasperating if not outright painful. The design of the missions left a lot to be desired too - whether it was doing the same thing multiple times, having to constantly travel from one end of the system to the other, only making the mission available to some people while everyone else waits. I just didn't have any fun with this and came to dread Fridays. And now this news that some people might have had their progress not tracked on CI's end... If I somehow get cheated out of my Hornet upgrade after all that I'm going to freak out. CI should be prepared to just give people the damn upgrade if there is a gap in their mission progress on their end - the fallout of them even being perceived as ripping people off could be insane and be all over the media. Besides, like Morph said, the reward is for the opportunity to spend more money so who cares at this point. Frankly, I would have preferred to just buy the damn upgrade outright and save myself from 5 weeks of pain. They also really need a better way for fans to be able to track their own progress, the tool in our tracker was poor to the point of uselessness.
Bottom line is this - from a technical perspective, the game can't handle these kind of events right now. Also, they need to do a serious post-mortem and do better with mission design. Not just in the way the missions are rolled out and tracked, but being more considerate of the different playstyles of the people playing their game.
Phase 5 was awful. I had to do it 7 times due to bugs. I did all the missions solo except for the last mission of Phase 1 and Phase 4A.
The ships were easy to kill in phase 5, but I could not defeat the bugs. When I finally beat it, there was no planet surface. The only thing I could land on was a rock that was a part of the "crashed ship" entity.
On one of my attempts, I got the boxes back to the Pyro jump station and fell through the elevator into space. I was floating around outside the station, and I was so pissed off. Then another time the box jumped out of my hand and fell through the ground. I then took my ship out of the hanger and picked up the box floating in space. While I was getting THAT box, the other ones disappeared. Yeah. I was pissed.
Yeah I was on it for over 5 hours due to bugs
@@Aurora_XRG had to go to an asian server
@@besiege8246 nope it was on US servers
@@Aurora_XRG you missed the point of what I was saying. I had to go to an Asian server.
@@besiege8246 oh I see what you mean. I'll try that when I do it again with some friends. Thanks for the advice
One of the things about morphs videos I am always impressed by is that he somehow manages to get daytime for most of his planet-side mission. The rest of us peasants always stuck in the dark.
I don't know why you have issue with cig putting the box mission in the end -- they clearly stated xenothreat incursion will be happen at pyro jump point right after stage 5, so you have it -- epic space combat at pyro jump point (with FPS combat onboard Idris) as finale to this event.
"They clearly state" - cool, we'll just take CIG at their word now
Because it’s a weird place to put a more low key mission.
Films or musical scores build up to a crescendo for a reason.
Because the events had been escalating in scope and scale pretty consistently, only to cap it off with a slightly altered starter mission. For the 'finale' you're talking about, we're going to have to wait several weeks outside the release pace of the rest of the mission to fly through an event with legendarily poor performance, do it on the new flight model instead of as a "last hurrah" for the current one, *and* do it on a fresh major patch.
I had a lot of issues with this, a combo of boxes not spawning, players griefing, broken NPCs…
Make all the missions you want CiG, it’s hard to play them when the game is fundamentally still a broken alpha.
I really hope we see a playable and not embarrassing game to try and get friends to join in 2025/2026… if not, I honestly might sell my few ships…
I’ll give them another ‘2 years’ as they always say… but this time unlike Chris, I am serious. I really want this game to succeed in a time where nothing else is even attempting this, but we can’t wait forever
Why would you buy multiple ships for a game that isn't even out yet? Play something else and chill
@@teddypicker8799 i’ve been playing a lot of older games (5th/6th gen) and mods for said games, and while they are great… they aren’t massive online multiplayer space games… nothing else comes close to what CiG is trying, and I have yet to see a game in 2024 I want to actually play. So I really hope CiG does well eventually, because modern gaming really sucks!
@@AgentXRiflewhy have a hissy fit though and sell your ships.
If it’s not baked yet, don’t play it, but don’t throw your toys out the pram.
I think they should have had a reward for each phase completed. Maybe bespoke paint pistol for completing the first phase, a bespoke paint smg for completing the second phase, limited edition back pack for completing the third, the armor set for completing the fourth and maybe a couple of different ship liveries, of which you could pick one for your fleet for completing phase five? Like a cool civilian defense force livery for either the F7C Mk.II or an Anvil Valkyrie. I'm just trying to complete phase 2, but the drop boxes don't seem to want to take the encryption keys. I've run the second mission of phase 2 around three times already. It's frustrating as hell.
These missions are well put together. I only wish there were some single player missions that gave awards. I don't have a group of people to play with.
same, especially beginner focused single player missions. Loading up in a starter ship it felt like you were facing a grind wall to do anything fun. A few introductory missions to different gameplay loops with some reward (even if its cash) would go a long way.
As we Solo players watch the game slowly abandon us.
I agree with you on that point. Though, for the past couple of weeks on just about every server I've played on there's always been a handful of people looking for a party to play the missions with :)
I did all of the missions except the first one as a 'solo'. I just asked for help in the chat and almost always got an instant reply.
Someone is always glad to help.
I've played this with whoever wanted my help on the server. I've done every part multiple times because they're fun and indeed to help people who normally play solo to be able to complete them. The game as a whole is always much more fun played with at least one friend. People tell me it's a PVP game but in my experience it is more a co-op game than anything else
@morphologis, I appreciate what you are saying about the phase 5, but the ships that spawned in and attacked you were natural spawns brought in prior to this patch. They spawn when you enter the region of a wreck site. I have video evidence of this behavior at wreck sites prior to any of this event being public. Currently, AI police and AI pirates will spawn in. In particular, you will often see reclaimers, starfarers, valkyries and cutlasses. With that knowledge, a number of smaller orgs have been making salvage money by taking advantage of these spawns.
Reach out if you want to see recordings or take a number of missions that take you to wreck sites across hurston.
I can appreciate the scale and effort that CIG placed into the event(s). I don't do any PvE/PvP type of game play but I was interested in the MK II. However, that's as far as it will ever go, even if I was willing to buy in, because I would not be able to meet the criteria to get the upgrade token. I did get a CCU to the F7C Hornet Mk II just in case something came along that I could participate in to get the military version (dogfighting centric). I concur that most everything was pretty well handled except the reward aspect of the event.
I wound up not trying the event because of the announced 'reward' of being able to spend more money. The concept reminded me of the F8 lighting event as well as the capture the Idris event, neither of which seemed particularly fun to me.
In hindsight, the event does look like it was fun to participate in, but they really need to step up their marketing. The goal should be to get as many people into the game as possible, including the ones that aren't going to spend cash on upgrades. Those people are who make valuable ships valuable simply by increasing their rarity. The upgrade option would've been far more effective as a marketing tool if it was granted _upon_ _completion_ of the event. It would encourage the people who would've wanted that upgrade to participate in _all_ future events hoping that the upgrade would 'drop' again.
I would like to see some cargo mission again. We did have those missions where you had to deliver supplies to a blocaded station, and IMO it could be included within this set too.
I agree with you, regarding the idea of fighting our way into FPS missions. If there are patrol ships, exterior guards, and maybe even AA weapons, the whole thing gets more unilaterally engaging. If they’re calling in reinforcements there, even better. Finally, a use for dropships! I felt this most acutely at Kareah.
As soon as I had that thought, I figured it had to be an issue of server load - and something that server meshing would solve. I bet that’s one of the first things we get, as soon as servers can dynamically shift authority.
A variety of missions using this progressive mechanic is going to be absolutely amazing
Making Phase 5 a "respite" mission is pretty funny. It's literally the most frustrating, given it's a single mission per server. Opens up to easy griefing and the bugs just add to it. I was very fortunate that my first try, the mission holder invited the whole server into a group and no bugs happened. It also doesn't respect peoples' time. Working a job and having a family, made this while endeavor like pulling teeth.
Cig needs to start giving away free ships for these events. Just for the publicity alone.
Do a ship for like 100-200$ first then go with a dragonfly or something similar.
These events should be limited to 2 weeks and take 3-9 days to complete depending how hardcore/casual you are
On one of phase 5 runs, I actually did run into NPCs on the ground. I don't think they were Xenothreat so don't know what was going on but surprised the hell out of us. Nobody was carrying any weapons, but luckily we were tooling around in a Hammerhead so we were able to completely overkill the poor sods
Is there a way to support your channel? I don’t see a patron or anything like that.
I do have a patreon that’s linked from my UA-cam channel page, or rather should be.
Completely agree with your points related to the rewards. Can't comment on the fun aspect of the missions as I chose not to participate for two reasons: 1) I'm a solo SC player and it looks like a group was needed to complete most of the missions, and 2) even if I decided to join a group to complete the missions, I wasn't planning on buying the new Hornet so the reward for completing the event would have been useless to me. One can only hope that CIG will keep adding new chained mission events for group play but also for solo players that make it worthwhile to participate. As for ship selling to fund the project, I'm not against it and think if they just keep releasing new ships the backers will buy them (no need for the game-souring types of tactics like the new Hornet upgrade reward). Also consider a second revenue stream that I feel is underutilized. If only CIG gave us a way to recover lost/stolen cosmetics paid for with money, more people would spend more money on vanity items which would boost revenues. There are a lot of free-to-play games out there that have been making obscene amounts of money from selling skins.
Another great video. I enjoyed most of the initiative, including the parts that I was able to solo. I can say that phase 4 was also my favorite. I am one who actually bought the new Hornet, and I am glad I did as I might not have been motivated to join the initiative otherwise, and it worked well in phases 2-4.
I think they could make something really nice out of giving out ship rental tickets as mission rewards. Like a ticket that if you turn it in you get a certain ship for a certain time, but you can store the ticket for as long as you want without it getting used up. If you build the mission economy around it I could see this beeing a very fun way to soft-lock people in progress and reward you for staying with a certain mission giver.
Imagine as an example redwood delivery giving you an important, special delivery after you completed enough normal, simple box deliveries. As a reward for this level up mission you'd get a 6hour rental ticket for a hull A and the new level of missions would now require you to haul bigger boxes for which you need a Hull A or equivalent ship. How handy that you just got a rental ticket to use said ship without a problem. Now these new missions would from time to time also give you such a pass (or maybe each missions gives a 1h rental pass) in addition to the cash rewards.
Goal would be that a player can keep renting the ship as part of their natural mission progression and can easily switch between mission paths "today I cash in my bounty hunter ticket from last week and play some bounty hunter missions, tomorrow I'll do the hauling,..." without needing to buy each and every ship permanently.
To keep the tickets from beeing flooded the shops might also just trade them in for cash at usual "MMO vendor buys your trash drops" percentages of their actual buying price.
Would also be nice if we could buy and trade such tickets. Want to invite a friend to fly wingman but don't trust them with your own ship? Just buy a 6h hornet rental and give it to them.
I have the same issue with unlocking the ability to buy the pirate gladius and catepillar from doing pirate swarm. Like, yay, I unlocked the ability to spend $100+ more dollars. Now, if it unlocked a special in game shop where you could buy it with in game credits, that would be the way to go with both the pirate stuff and this event.
I sometimes think that bringing all those crytek devs onto the team was one of the worst things that ever happened to SC.
They brought with them a detailed understanding of how to build a first person shooter, and now that's what we have in place of the space sim we were supposed to get.
As someone who did spend the money for the event, those minor details felt like bigger problems because they made me wonder if the event was complete and now that I’ve completed it I just hope and pray that my account actually got credit for completing it.
did almost all phases with like 10-20 random people at the end it felt like we had all the people in the server in 1 party for phase 5, the only one i did solo was phase 2
my experience with incogni has been great, though I wish they allowed for adding more emails and info the removal list
The last mission was terrible due to the bugs. I probably ran through it 5 times before getting it to work, and it wasn't even the same bug every time. First time the cargo center dropoff was bugged, the second time the admin center dropoff was bugged, 3rd, 4th, and 5th time the ammunition crate was not interactible. Only reason we didn't have more dropoff bugs is because we just server hopped until we found dropoffs that work.
I was entirely not interested in the original 'reward', but did enjoy the missions. I finished all but the Kareah one solo and even that one almost. I got shot through the walls or I would have made it.
The 'fleet battle' one was a joke. Even when I was on site within minutes, I never saw more than 4 enemies remaining and dozens of players. Making it server-wide was questionable.
The final box mission was an exercise in frustration. Took me three days to finally be able to get one that wasn't bugged with boxes missing at pickup, not being able to deliver them and getting a crimestat for shooting the attacking ships at the pickup site
0:40 I wonder if it is possible to bring hover inside SPK through that airlock. Like X1 or Nox
I appreciate your viewpoint, but to get access to a rare ship and it be a free CCU, as opposed to the F8 Lightning where you had to purchase it outright, is pretty awesome as a reward from my point of view. Maybe not everyone likes collecting rare ships, but there is a decent part of the community of backers that really appreciate earning rare stuff. They could improve it further by allowing people who earn the CCU to be able to purchase the F7A in-game, so it doesn't have to be real money (but then that in-game version should be really expensive to represent it's rarity).
Great video, and good point on the reward as an event reward rather than a new money reward!
No login until server meshing or Polaris.
SAME
same
And hangers
I showed up at SPK, not a soul in sight. Started it solo, got halfway, died, came back... And 40 other players were now there 😳
I was personally excited for the reward since I'[m planning an upgrade path for my starter package ship. Howver, I ended up not doing any of the event really bc I found it too difficult to connect with other players to complete the missions and soloing them just really wasn't possible with a starter ship.
Wish SC had a "matchmaking" system or "SOS" feature to missions that made it easier for players without any other friends who play SC to connect with other players in game.
I think they need to work on in game ships being available through reputation. Then they could make the reward for completing Overdrive the reputation to purchase the F7Amk2 in game.
I think there is definitely room for improvement, but it's heading in the right direction. Overall a fun change of pace from the normal game.
i would love more just general gameplay videos
These missions are the best way for cig to reward cosmetics instead of selling them.
I enjoyed the missions, obtw there is still one more coming. Number six is still out there… On mission five I actually had to shoot down one of the NPC ships as they had the packages on board the cutty black instead of the starfareer. Still not sure how that happened, but doing that solo was fun.
Sounds good! This missions will be a nice addition
That's why I like to watch Morph: because he say what I have been thinking this whole time, since the launch of the event. That's also why I didn't participate in it, btw.
Thanx for an other great video Morph.
I love the vision behind SC and I am a backer for quite some time BUT i am not able to play it anymore, until AI and server issues will be improved. Even the location sync of party members is sooooo bad … that i prefer playing Kebab Chefs 😂
Star Citizen Squadron 42 Update
I feel like gaining major account rewards based solely on progress over time in an alpha environment always seemed odd... With so many people saying progress is backsliding, or not counting, I feel like that kind of thing is way less concrete than the "drop" based golden ticket situation.
Agree on the priority targets that disable and board would have been a lot better, probably not doable with current LIVE tech though.
Star Citizen being oblivious and unable to read the room should've been obvious when that brit showed up on SCLive and said he was surprised at how much players wanted road tech.
I think many of the devs shield themselves away from the community.
hi Morphologist, as someone who always wanted to play star citizen but was unable to due to various reasons such as a lack of story related missions I feel like it is time to actually play the game since they have added more content
i wll sit on the f7a upgrade until they lock in the ships (before beta?) and then upgrade a random ship of a game package to the f7cmk2 just in time to have the f7a
CIG doesn't do a good job of informing players what the mission is. In "Priority Targets" I thought the mission was exactly what you proposed- board a ship and get a key, which would have been awesome. But that meant that I spent a lot of time trying NOT to destroy the target ships. In "Intel Raid" nothing really tells you that you have to reset the servers or how to do it- it's very easy to not notice a little message on an unimportant panel, so you end up having to try that first mission three times to figure it out. It's all very annoying.
I guess he forgot about the Arlington Gang contracts series.
It's the server performance and instability that makes me not want to do these, as I have a few hours to play something each day, and one of those setbacks can mean I achieve nothing. I look forward to doing these missions, once those issues are sorted.
The trouble is we just keep spending the money anyway so they don’t care about being discreet or less blatant
I gave up on this project recently. After 10 years and thousands contributed they decided to prioritize PTU access to subscribers over concierge. I feel that as a long time backer I was shafted.
It was a lot of fun and reason to get org connections together. There is plenty of lone wolf content but fewer reasons to get groups together and that was the purpose of this mission set. XT is one of my favorite events and glad it's getting some iteration. Server tech was the biggest hinderance but that is the same for any mission.
I don't really care about them tying a ship sale to an event as long as there is some other in game award to balance it out even if it's just flair or a forum badge. Devs and server time in datacenters with big pipe internet access on 4 continents is not free. Do you think SC would have succeeded if everyone had to pay 15usd per month to play?
Star Citizen with smooth gameplay is shaping up so good. Got to upgrade my 10 y/o mobo-RAM-CPU XD
Have the look of the armor in the game been improved? The armor looks better than 8 months ago! Before it looks really clumpy and bad.
very nice to see descent missions
I wish they let us keep one Mantis Helmet if we Aquire it during the mission like the Halloween Vanduul mask event. That would’ve been a cool in-game reward. The Xt medium armour is less valuable for me at least.
I have been unable to complete any of these missions. They kept timing out or there were not enough players working on the same mission. I only been killed by one friendly player once during the bunker raid and I didn't want to charge him. These are not missions for lone solo players.
I understand what they are trying to do and the state of the game is still in development and they have to fund that. But with that being said, with limited-timed events they should give people a ship or something for Free for participating. I understand that this is a massive ask and stretch, but events are only fun when the reward is actually worth something. That's just my opinion though and i know many will probably disagree.
Xenothreath are the good guys. Based and 40k pilled.
Did two of the first missions untill i found out that the reward was that they let me spend more money i dont have on something i dont want. Really looked forward to xenothreat at first but havent played since the first missions now..
You looked forward to it before any rewards and then didn't do it cause of the reward? Wow
When are the giant mechs gonna be added?
Play the game to earn the RIGHT to upgrade a ship to a rarer version of that ship. Oh but you gotta buy the ship itself first. For real money. Then do the entire event.
Well you get an armor set too. I dont care about the ship upgrade, I just played for the armor reward.
Pretty sure you can buy the ship down the line if you really want it
I think I wouldve been ok with the rewards if they let me use the ship for the whole duration of the event tbh.
I get that they want us to get excited for the new ship but give me a reason to buy it dont just hang it above my head with a paywall
TY for the ultrawide videos. Having an UW OLED makes notifications of your vids SO much more exciting!
LoL, But Morph, this thing isn't over!! the FINAL happens when 3.23 drops to Live, when the main Xenothreat Mission takes place. Now had they waited and did this whole Xenothreat thing from start to finish IN 3.23, it might have been something, but to put the majority of the thing in 3.22 only for the Finale to be in 3.23........... a misstep in my view.
Zenno-threat or zeeno-threat? Z-sound or S-sound? I'm not making fun, I honestly I have no idea
Eh, I tried to make the very first, some aholes were camping at SPK so I couldn't. Emergent gameplay I guess, no lawful NPCs to break this kind of grief.
Back to making stuff in deep space without talking to anyone to avoid losers.
Sadly this was really painful to do if you didnt have a large group of friends or an org around. Tried it solo and with another friend and it was impossible.
I have tried to play this mission every single day for the last week, with zero success in getting even the first one done.
where there any xenos in the xenothreat?
Xenos as in aliens? Cuz that's what they are fighting against so no there wasn't aliens
xenothreat is a human supremacist terror group that is against aliens. the humans are the threat. the xeno's (and people friendly to them..aka.. sane people) are the targets.
XenoThreat is a human faction that opposes aliens
Whats the music at 7:39
It's such a shame so much of this game is hamstrung by server performance and networking. I just hope folks can hold on until they get it sorted. They seem to finally be testing the server meshing tech they need to make all this work.
Another great video from the legend!
Feel like you missed the part where the end of the chain leads into Xenothreat event, so wouldn't the box mission be a good "rest" before the finale? I think it's fine. As it's the calm before the storm of the finale that is the big xenothreat event (which I think they also changed?)
Also, as a long time backer Star Citizen has ZERO reason to promote the fact they are a game now...because they aren't.
The only thing I WANT to do when I do log on is fly around, enjoy the pretty vistas, and take pictures. That's it, and that will continue to be it till progress isn't being wiped every other quarter.
The game needs dozens of chains like this to even reach a launch minimum viable product and it has zero. Just a bunch of filler missions with no setpieces, dungeons, etc. It's also an EVENT chain...not a quest chain.
The only thing it has are "events" which are only a tool to sell ships, not to really be any meaningful consistent gameplay WHEN they ever work.
I really think the team has no business marketing this as a game because it really isn't one yet, it's still a tech demo with a few test subject missions that may or may not work depending on the build. This Overdrive initiative is a nice model for future use of "quest chains" to make the game feel better (hopefully with a procedural element to shake up order and type so you aren't just doing Overdrive Initiative over and over every week as some kind of repeating weekly event chain or something)....but it won't turn this game around 180.
End of the day, Star Citizen is JUST NOW starting to build meaningful quest design and it's going to be a couple of years till they really SHOULD market this as a game because it's still just a screenshot simulator where you can screw around with friends and roleplay at best. The game itself still isn't there and it's so timesink heavy anyone told to come play would be smacked in the face with a 2 hour game session where they accomplish very little with the understanding all their effort will get erased come 4.0 anyway...let alone 5.0 or 1.0 or launch.
Until getting into a location isn't just an elevator but a hacking mini-game, a power supply mini-game, into a combat scenario, into a ship combat sequence...the quest design isn't actually doing what they are selling with things like SQ42. These quest chains are necessary to achieve that...but fundamentally still don't actually do enough in this T0 state (because evrything is still T0)
If the want to sell the game AS IS?
They need more locations...period. If it's a screenshot simulator in the vein of Microsoft Flight Simulator but with a bit more gameplay? Then give us more things to see...but until that watershed the games abysmal ramshackle gameplay is just not going to attract anyone but the most wallet fat or idealistic gamers with heavy duty hardware.
I'd gladly log back in to explore Pyro and Nyx and Odin...but those aren't options. I'm stuck in the most milquetoast system in the verse where the cities are just strip malls.
If they want to bring players back...they really need to focus on pumping out as much visual and aesthetic content as possible, imo. I won't be coming back for salvage, because it isn't fun. I won't be coming back for Overdrive, because it's broken. I will be coming back to fly around Pyro and vibe while I check out what the procedural planets/tile system can manifest in beautiful locations while I listen to music.
Which is such a wild thing to still be saying in 2024 for this game but it's just nowhere near being in a position to sell gameplay.
SQ42 can sell gameplay. SC needs to sell playing in a shared space with friends with an abundance of beautiful locations...and because they decided to gate EVERYTHING behind servermeshing related to that...well...they are going to hit a wall.
When we start seeing a new system every half year (small systems not something like Terra)...I really don't see this game surviving on its gameplay until servers are absurdly polished and the game is bugless AND progress is saved.
Hi Morph! cool vid
Awesome content and updates!
hey morph. on battles happening near the jump point I have to disagree with the logic that they are coming from the jump point. I think a terrorist group could not cross that jumppoint with their fleet as the first line of defence. they would either come as individuals through the jumppoint and build up a fleet in Stanton or they would have to gain control over the jump points defences before coming over
There’s a thing in lore for this actually. The main jump point is constant and fixed, but around it randomly appear smaller temporary jump points that can be located using specialized ships like the Carrack. This isn’t in the game yet, but I’d imagine they would use those temporary ones. We could then get random locations in the cloud to have to defend and it would satisfy the lore perfectly.
I have done all the missions, it was all good except the buggy mess that was phase 5. But in all its fun and there is a nice reward. I mean would done it for armor alone. Looking forward for more ingame things like these ones.
you got it. ty
Is this video playing at 1.25x speed or something? I had to slow it down to 0.75 speed for it to sound normal.
This is what their second or third Event centered around ship sale? Not Cool CGI, not Cool.
I haven't bothered to do any Overdrive missions. The "reward" is worthless to me since I'll never be able to afford an F7C Mk 2, and the reported bugginess of the missions didn't sound fun.
Yeah, the communication/cooperation/integration/etc. between the game devs and marketing has been a recurring issue with various events and sales.
More content!
As you said, the focus should be making a great game. More and more it seems CIGs main focus is keeping this money printer running, then maybe make a game.
I love how you don't even mention credit reward because of how inconsequential they are.
There is a big issue in the game with mission rewards in general. Most missions, including the event, either aren't worth the time and efforts you spend doing them, or have such a low reward that they aren't worth doing altogether.
This problem is going to be exacerbated with the upcoming changes to the economy and the massive price rises.
And yeah obviously, going through these missions, some of which were seriously a pain because of bugs or bad design, all for the opportunity to spend more money, is really lame.
It works though, given how many people are buying the Mk.II and doing them, but still, for new players there's really nothing of value to be had here.
Sir, you have been doing this for a long time.
Show me your mastership - Posted by Lizzy CEO
Please bring one for me with the agents. There are a lot of secrets stolen.
Please be considerate until the owner succeeds in mastership allowing firearms. Please prepare for any emergency.
My personal take is that I loved it. Me and a group of friends play every Friday evening and for us this was something to look forward to. We didn't get any horrible bugs; we were able to smoothly complete all phases. The reward was the mission itself and the CCU and armor is just bonus. Some of us purchased the F7C Hornet Mk2 because we like it and are looking forward for the F7A upgrade while some others bought it just as a steppingstone in a CCU chain while others didn't buy the Mk2 and will be happy to get a free CCU. More than half of our group are Concierges, and we just enjoy the game for what it is as even for those of our group that do not care for the Hornet Mk2 still loved going through Overdrive together. If for some weird reason the Hornet Mk2 as well as the F7A CCU would get deleted from everything we still wouldn't feel like we wasted our time. It was genuine fun and that's the reward. The rest is extra.
You have a fair point with the event reward being more about the game than the sales but at the same time, Overdrive was the first of what CIG is hoping for many. They know a ship to purchase for every of this event is not viable to attract players so I think it's safe to assume that future Overdrive-type events will yield more in-game rewards, and this will become increasingly interesting as we cross the 1.0 version threshold.
Did they do the new star map system yet? Can't get back into this game until that star map is gone.
The new star map has been added to the 3.23 EPTU and haven't heard anything being glitchy, so we SHOULD (tm) see it in-game probably around.... May-ish
I havent tried the missions yet but i do agree that the reward was very amateurishly implemented. The ones that decided this seems to be completely out of touch with the outside worlds perception of the game. (and us the backers)
They NEED to be thinking of these things now that the game is on its way to 1.0.
Morph, there is a LOT of cake in your comments my guy! Egads!
I didnt even try the event because of the reward.