Xenothreat, Siege of Orison, Blockade Runner, Jumptown, I think we are ready for something that focuses on the other parts of Star Citizen. Not saying "no danger allowed", but there's a lot they could do with what's already there.
Yeah, the whole 'we just finished a big combat event, so now we want a trading one', only to have most of those parts being more combat really killed any hype I had for these new trading things. Maybe the normal missions will be good...though if I have to go to the blockaded station I guess that would be a bust... I like combat fine (not the pvp, but that's a me thing), but yeah, I got this game for exploration/trade promises. And those are horrifically lackluster.
I agree that they don't have to intentionally incorporate combat into everything. They can account for the possibility but they shouldn't make it a requirement to have combat in every event.
I posted on spectrum they could easily expand the The Gundo Covalex Hub mission: who was Mel Ososky working for? has the smuggling ring moved to another Covalex hub somewhere? can we find data pads around Stanton to locate this smuggling ring? can we inform the Advocacy of their location and end the mission? can we join this smuggling ring instead of giving the Advocacy their location, gain rep with them and smuggle contraband items to locations and make UEC? This going make the MSR USEFUL, since we have to load our own cargo now, the shielded cargo area should be WORKED on and this type mission implemented.
It's not even that, it's their complete ignorance of what their player base wants... no response to it, no acknowledgement of it. Just fuck you, keep sending us money.
@@Ogata123 Another of Space Tomato's videos has the comment from a guest (who admits to being combat-focused) that combat is 'it' right now to give players something to do until promised content that most players really want is ready. The problem for CIG is that people waiting for content like exploration, data-running; crafting, base building and, notably, a proper dynamic economy may simply desert the game because combat isn't an attractive stop-gap.
The biggest laugh/eye-roll I have had in years was their recent show when they said 'we just had a big combat event, so we wanted to do a trading/cargo focused one, so here is the blockade runner event.' So...the TRADING event has: Assault the pirates to get to/out of a station; Run down the pirates that stile the cargo and disable/destroy them; Get the cargo; Assault the pirates to get to/out of the station and unload. So...no TRADING. Yes to cargo, but by that logic the Xenothreat one could be called the same, becuase we had to get that cargo to Jerico. The things that have had me so excited about SC wasn't ever the combat. That's nice, I liked it in WC, Privateer and Freelancer, but I'm an explorer at heart, and some trade/combat with that is cool. For my KS pledge I got the Freelancer, something that, at the time, was touted as being one of the most modular ships and an explorer with trade capabilities, while being able to hold its own, bur tis not a com at ship. Perfect, bargained and done. Cutlass was the more combat ship and dedicated. Fast forward a decade and the Cutty is one fo the most versatile ships out there while the Lancer has largely been forgotten and outclassed by a half dozen other ships. Exploration is still a nothing-burger, and trade is, for me, less appealing than ever becuase I don't want to waste 20 min loading and unloading stuff when some camper can just pop me and gets no real repercussion for it. I may be out millions and months of gameplay, the other guy gets a half hour of mining while his mates pick the bones and send him a cut. Or he did it for the lulz and goes to bed, to be free in the morning. So yeah, I think they have focused far to much on combat, while letting everything else get cast in its shadow/tainted by it. Watch, real exploration is going to be something like 'oh! You found a never before seen jump point! But pirates somehow!'
They had to add combat for two reasons. One, because a significant, active, and quite vocal segment of the player base want it, But even more tellingly, two, because without combat elements the current game mechanics and features do not provide any way to add much interest to glorified but largely hollow fetch quests.
Exactly. Can't even argue to players of competing space games, because they can do what I wanted from SC for years already and I can just watch pretty graphics of combat I'm not interested in. Feels like wasted money 12 years ago.
The top comment of the penultimate ISC about the Blockade runner event actually says it all: "We wanted to make a cargo event because most of our events are really heavy on combat. So we made an event that's also really heavy on combat."
Because making PVP events is easy. You set up a map, a reason to be there, no challenging NPC AIs to program, and the players make up the rest. Imagine how much harder it would be to make hours worth of PVE missions like MMOs do! Not to mention make a coherent storyline to connect them all.
In short... I genuinely don't recall ever seeing a chill, peaceful event. They're all the same.... Hey guys we did this event of cat and mouse... we lured the PvE players in so they could get f*cked by the PvP players. Fun times, right?? 😃 And we'll just keep rinsing and repeating this method because thats the only playstyle that should exist. The hunter and the hunted. We don't do peaceful gameplay here. It's not fair to the PvP players that you find a peaceful gaming session after work. We want you fighting tooth and nail 24/7. And if you aren't, you deserve nothing.. ☺️
As someone who's wholeheartedly focused on PVP first and PVE second - I fully think you hit the nail on the head here. There's so many games out there already focused on combat. People out there in the verse doing their thing is exactly what SC needs. With the nominal risk of someone like me pilfering all their stuff. My hope is that there is higher focus on exploration to chart space, rather than everything just being fully open and braindead out of the box. Discovering cool things, new places and analyzing them, uploading it to data storage on my ship and selling it for a profit is cool game loops which can shift the focus on doing menial tasks that are lackluster just to get money to buy yet another ship.
@@Dracounguis As a player mostly interested in mining and industry, I've long since realized this game was never meant for people like me. Not only does CIG not give a flying fuck about us, the rest of the player base just laughs at us for existing. Best thing I ever did is selling my account. Now if only YT would stop recommending me videos about this circus...
@@chrishoppner150 yeah when I first pledged in 2013 I was expecting a Privateer/Starlancer like game. (And it being done many years ago.) SC is the poster child of feature creep on steroids. 🫤
Please define "PvP". I'm not joking here. People have a fundamentally misunderstanding what "player versus player" actually means. For most it's just fighting other players: "me vs them". That idea isn't entirely wrong as most games do not support any other way of interaction between players. In Star Citizen however, PvP is not just combat. If you're a freighter pilot looking for a lucrative trading route, someone else will do too. That puts you in competition with the other guy. You both buy stuff, you both sell stuff, no fighting involved. But since the prizes may change depending on offer and demand, the one who buys early and sells early usually gets to make the profit as the span between buying and selling prizes is bigger. And since it's a competition between two players who do not cooperate, it's a form of PvP. Similar idea about racing. You, your friends, other guys, take part in a racing event. It's a competitive event, of course, and that puts you into a "player versus player" scenario. Again, this is PvP. Just without weapons and combat. The "classic understanding" what PvP is, does not really apply on Star Citizen. However, CIG -has- a tendency to add "combat" to any given scenario, regardless if it's appropriate or not. They need to rethink that approach, as one day "Death of a Spaceman" turns into a thing and I don't want to risk my skin every single time I leave a spacedock.
@@Tekjive Exploration requires a huge universe to explore while PvP requires keeping everyone confined in a compact area. So it would probably be better to give up and go play No Man's Sky, which incidentally just hit 5.0, has disablable multiplayer and no further monetization after buying the game. And, in all honestly, looks better.
@@clovernacknime6984 Have around 3,000 hours in NMS and do play it far more than Star Citizen nowadays since there is still no true exploration; or farming (no Endeavor yet); or crafting; or base building (no Pioneer yet); or passenger transport (no Genesis Starliner or Spirit E1 yet)... which means no extra dosh for CIG as a bottom-line.
It's because PVE content (whether combat or peaceful) requires functional AI and servers that aren't bugged/broken/hopelessly desynched. CIG hasn't been able to deliver that so far in year 12.
@@zeroneutral Odd, I've found 3.23 to be the worst patch for server Desynch going back 2 years. AI on live is also usually braindead, with their much vaunted baristas doing dumb stuff like dropping the drink behind the bar, if they even respond, while FPS gameplay is a crapshoot between braindead cattle to the slaughter or 360 noscope wizards depending on how the server is feeling. Mining has been an invisible asteroidapalooza. TL:DR; No it's not getting better, it MIGHT get better if they sort out their nonsense. More likely, the same people that introduced the desynch bugs in to their monolithic server architecture are going to be responsible for much worse and harder to debug issues in their distributed architecture.
Yeah, SC needs something other than combat events. Elite Dangerous does this by providing two options during a 'Community Goal', one is combat and the other isn't.
It annoyed me a bit as a new player that several missions that sounded at first like they should be non-combat (the one to deploy probes, and the ones to investigate wrecks, for instance), were worded so as to make it clear that they had combat elements. It just seemed so unnecessary. For a new player, flying somewhere, deploying some probes, and flying back is already a learning experience. Why add anything more? A a result, a few months later I still haven't done any of those missions.
I would like to see facilities designed like working facilities and not PvP arenas. They can't keep harping upon 'realism' for so many other things but then have blatantly game-y things like that. Pick a lane! You making a simulator or a game!
Some really good points. I suspect that making everything show combat is more to do with marketing psychology, and what makes people spend money, but I think the point you make about signalling what Star Citizen is going to be all about is an important one.
@@SpaceTomato Why would they? It's bad for business. Least amount of effort for biggest gain. I'd wager that around 2015 they started deviating from they original dream of building a universe and started focus on gaining more and more money. Because they realized the backers were treating them like gods. And it's very easy to fall from that position. Deviancy of normalcy. 12 years and what do you have, objectively? Not much. To compare. It took 18 months to design and build the SR-71 and it took around a decade to develop economic viable EUV technology. And CIG cannot manage a pure software project in 12 years. Something is very wrong here. The problem is they understand the psychology of FOMO too well and are taking expertly severe disadvantage of it towards it's backers and consumers. A goal without a deadline is just a dream.
Regarding: "What makes people spend money"; as a backer who became involved seven years ago, the combat trend and focus in Star Citizen has made me stop spending with CIG in order to watch and wait. By pushing combat CIG is limiting its income. Space Tomato's survey suggests that under one fifth of players favour combat while three quarters want exploration and industrial gameplay. Combat not only appeals to a relatively small proportion of players but the majority can spend relatively little to play. The cheapest starter ship is fine for anyone who prefers FPS, on-foot combat and even heavy fighters for ship-to-ship combat are 'only' a couple of hundred dollars. CIG is growing and needs regular, significant income to keep the lights on. The focus on combat looks to be at odds with that. That matters because if CIG goes under, the promise of exploration; farming; crafting; passenger transport; base building; data-as-cargo and a dynamic economy all ends for those of us who backed for that.
Even in the Hull C commercial there's combat. A strickly heavy cargo ship flies through an active war zone for some reason. CIG is unable to even imagine any loop without combat in it in one form or another
Im actually really sick & tired of everything being focused on combat. It feels like that's the ONLY thing the devs actually care about and the only thing they test internally. Which is why we got Master Modes before they even bothered to fix docking or the Hull-C.
To be fair, we're only on year twelve... they need to gather data to be able to get all the combat systems, damage, weapon balance, etc all sorted. It's not like they've had plenty of time to do this... ;)
I can't wait for Terra to open up. Its the second most important star system in the Empire (Sol always coming first), and the first High-Sec system in the game.
The community's feeling of anti-combat-focus is the exact reason why the Argo MPUV won ship of the year. It's the only ship that doesn't have ANY weapons and CIG completely missed the point that we want to see more ships without weapons and more non-combat play opportunities. The entire universe of Firefly/Serenity happened aboard a smuggling ship that had zero weapons and the best adventures. That's the gameplay style than many people want to experience. Currently there is little to no benefit for not having weapons because they focus so heavily on combat. They need more ships that have weapon slots that don't, by default, have weapons equipped so players can add weapons, if they want, but the ship can be marketed as non-combat.
@bperras Hola, in firefly serenity. Universe. Malcom Reynolds fought for what he believed in. Which was the people around him. And profit haha. If not for the bugs, once stealth mechanics ( remember the loud crybaby to lead the feds away from a power down ship?) And the. Fix the ship Kaylee portion of the game I'm good haha only 10 years to go haha.
Creating player demand for a "Serenity Class Transport" would involve implementing game mechanics like barring armed vessels from entering armistice zones and/or having entire systems be HighSec, where the only ships are either authorized security or attacked on sight. But the game does not remotely have the systems or features needed to support any of that.
@@TheFuzzywhumpus Yeah, mostly FPS, but they also shot that space snare thing with Jayne's rifle by cracking the cargo doors. Silly part of that was that smokeless powder does not need an atmosphere to function.
@bperras *"The community's feeling of anti-combat-focus is the exact reason why the Argo MPUV won ship of the year."* - That maybe why you voted for it, and why people you know voted for it, but looking at Spectrum, in game chat, and various discords gives a much different picture. Most people voted for the MPUV because content creators pushed it as a meme and mobilisied hundreds and thousands of people to get it done. People were literally encouraged to make new accounts just to have more votes to get it across the line, as a laugh. It was also to stop another popular ship--I think it was the Carrack, iirc--from winning. That said I agree with your wider points about the importance of other game loops. Cheers!
Inspect and repair type low level missions around the exterior of stations and cities would be something I'd welcome. As a gentle introduction to engineering gameplay I'm imagining a power substation relay that has knocked out a section of city or station. Take the mission to find the malfunctioning node, swap it out, and have a dual payment in UEC as well as seeing that part of the city/station lights come back online with radio traffic saying thanks. Later 'heist' style gameplay could similarly knock out security cameras, power, or comms networks on the exteriors of stations where a bounty is hiding. Would also liven up the stations with little ships buzzing around with maybe some nice welding light effects associated with repair.
You said a non-combat dynamic event "wouldn't be as exciting" but I'd be way more excited about that than I am about Blockade Runner. I just do not care about combat, and I'm longing for the day when non-combat careers feel like part of a real, changing world with events that affect them, rather than just the exact same loop over and over again.
I feel like there’s a lack in the type of challenge presented, the ‘complication’ for each mission is combat. A notable exception is some of the unstable material deliveries, which is a nice touch. It’s frustrating that they are spending so much time making sure non-combat professions require extensive, time-consuming and often tedious preparation and execution then making absolutely positively, certain that someone can wreck that entire process with zero investment combat, suffering few repercussions. Being able to trash other players’ time investment in a whim seems core to the game’s design. There’s got to be risk, planning and care. But it needs to be on both sides. At the moment only one side is ever risking anything and if you’re not shooting, you’re losing.
And yet when I whine about the flight model some people defend it by saying "who cares if the flight model is a bit arcady. The game isn't all about combat. That's just a small part of the game". When every freaking ship in the game, even racers, have guns on them, the game is all about combat.
I really hope that the game doesn't double down on PVP. Way back when I played WoW, I always hated the aspect of PVP servers where I really couldn't move freely about the world without a group to protect myself from being ganked. I like group play but I really hope there's a way to make a modest living doing solo play relatively safely.
THEN WHY WOLD YOU PLAY ON A PVP SERVER! Dear gods. I can understand not wanting to pvp. But omg in that case YOU selected the pvp environment. And then still complain?!
@@RasakBlood Calm down man. I just made a comment. I did end up moving to a PVE server on WoW once I figured it all out. I don't have that option on SC.
If the game is balanced for PvP with PvP in mind FIRST it’ll give everyone (regardless of play style) the tools to deal with players focused solely on PvP and leverage the odds in your favour if you prepare yourself for the eventuality. For example, current balance is still allowing fighters to dominate against multi crew, whereas most PvPers (like the much hated Avenger_one) want this to stop, they want the balance to be so that if you have a multi crew cargo ship it’ll take a multiplayer assault to bring you down with casualties for the pirates. If you’re in a hull C or an A2 filled to the brim with valuable cargo and you’re hauling through pyro, in a PvP balanced SC, you need to hire a fighter escort so that while you make a run for it, using the turrets to keep fighters away and preventing anyone from boarding, the escorts would make sure that you would escape by evening the odds or making it simply not worth the risk for would be attackers. Or risk it, go solo and keep all the profit. But don’t blame the pirate players for making yourself easy pickings. Right now 2 buccaneers and a mantis would tear you to shreds and steal your stuff because of a lack of balance. If combat isn’t balanced/fixed first then there’s no point in you hauling, mining, savaging if someone is simply going to take it from you despite being in a ship that outclasses the pirate. Even right now, you know there are pirate players. Hire a PvP player or a fighter escort to protect you/die for you. If they succeed offer them a percentage of the profit. As people have noted, there’s no point doing non combat because combat might come your way and it’s unfair and unbalanced. So first comes the balance then everything else.
@@RasakBlood Some games put resources vital to progression in PvP zones, thus forcing non-PvP players to enter PvP zones if they want to get better gear or resources.
I am a combat player, but showcasing combat when the combat experience is really server mesh dependent… is odd to me. The performace quality needed to make combat feel fluid isnt there and they should shift to all the other phenominal game loops where latency isnt as much of a hinderance to their experience.
1000‰ agree... Aren't there already a million existing FPS and plenty of flight shooters? I don't mind there being *some* combat opportunities, but it sure seems like it's the primary focus and not enough time and energy is spent on the other loops that would make SC unique and great .
@@El1qt Its only a PvP game because they haven't done anything else. It never was suppose to be a primarily PvP game. Also PvP MMO's die quick. When the none PvP players leave so do most of the PvP players because there are no easy targets anymore so only the most dominate PvPers are having fun. Everyone else hates it and leaves.
hum, I seem to notice in the ISC or whatever in which they spoke about cargo missions and EVR system that cargo missions might involve "risks" and .... "combat". Always. Fucking. Combat. Pffffffffffffff
@AlexandreParchomenko yeah because it's a sandbox game with pvp. You're never completely safe , if you don't want any risk of combat go play No Man's Sky.
@@thumpertron NMS has plenty of combat. It's not very challenging, but it does exist. In fact, you get thrown directly into combat about once every 5-7 times you jump to a new system.
@valeriansamborski5844 What you just suggested would absolutely ruin the game and make it the boring thing imaginable. There is no point in any game loop unless it involves some risk. If you've actually been following the development of the game, you'll know that they're definitely NOT going to limit combat to specific areas or make it 'consensual'. Those ideas are so far off the mark from what CIG wants to make that I'm shocked you're even playing Star Citizen in the first place.
@@thumpertronboring for who? For you and your ilk. If you really believe that everyone wants PVP so badly, why would you care if there were areas restricted to it? You would still always have lots of people to pvp with, isn't that what you want? No, I don't think that is what you want, I think you want to find players who don't spend hours and hours learning to fight in combat fighters because that means no risk for you. A very large number of people want the other game loops in SC which means we dint spend hours learning to fight. But you don't want us to be able to play the game OUR way, which by the way is what CIG has said about the sim, you want to force all of us to play the way YOU want.
Looking forward to "Death of a Spaceman". Perhaps most player will start value their virtual lives and try to stay alive. This may translate into several changes of how certain situations get solved. I doubt people will fight to the death if other options are available. A fleet battle won't turn both fleets to dust, but the losing side may actually pull out. Rescue teams will be sent to pick up any survivors. Elite Dangerous has the "Fuel Rats" - and there's at least one organization dedicated to SAR jobs in Star Citizen. Organizations will have their own SAR teams to. Logistics are more and more important. Preparation for battle may take hours or even days instead minutes. While most games ONLY feature conflict and combat for players, Star Citizen may turn into a game where an ordinary player ant to avoid combat and live a peaceful life. Other players may actually enjoy the thrill of a "hardcore" experience with consequences. I'm among them, although my focus is not combat in Star Citizen, but exploration. I do my part in my organization and will pilot a fighter if we need to defend ourselves 'though.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 I am looking forward to Death of a Spaceman as well. The thrill of going outside of the safe areas of space to locate lucrative resources for exploitation, as the game gets fleshed out is really appealing. Since September 2023, I've been treating the game as if death of space man is currently implemented. I play fairly often, and I haven't been killed by a player in nearly 8 months (assuming I even encounter anyone). People have tried to kill me, but I've always managed to slip away. I have certainly died from bugs out of my control, but I mention this to support your point that hopefully other players will change the way they play when they understand death has consequences for their character and it needs to be the last thing you want to happen. My number will come up eventually, as all things come to an end, but it's been really fun to play this way.
I fear that Pvpers could care less about death of a spaceman, they have nothing to lose, they don't even wear full armor when they fly, just a sperm suit and helmet that is free. With insurance on ships, they won't even lose those and they will just recall them and a few minutes later be back at it. The people most affected by DOSM will be the non PvP crowd who are trying to build industries
Honestly, death of a spaceman is gonna change/evolve before we see it, it won't be anything we recognize from what's been described over the years because too mu much of th3 games focus has changed.
You will look forward to it until players who dont care about in game money and just want to troll kill you in game with their cash purchased ship. All DOASM does is make the schadenfreude that much sweeter when you kill a “carebear” knowing they just lost a ton of progress that they actually care about.
Unwanted PvP has always been a problem in this game. It's hard to do most anything without getting jumped. The people doing it don't even want challenging PvP. They seem to avoid PvP with other combat vessels, choosing instead to go after soft targets like cargo ships.
Hard disagree that unwanted PvP is a major problem. 1) It’s easy to avoid other people, and 2) given current server limitations you only come across people who want to fight when you go to known hotspots. There’s plenty to do outside those areas.
I could not agree more. 100% agree with you 🍅. I love combat but a little variety goes a long way. Give me Cargo, Mining, Salvage, Data Running, Exploring along with Combat. Then you not only made a game but a culture for everyone.
Ive been saying this from the start that the PvE non-combat folks need to be thrown a bigger bone. Call me a "care bear" if you want, fine, but I enjoy it when there are places in games where you just can't do combat. Where you can just chill. Decorate your home. Explore at your leisure. Maybe mine a little or salvage. Perhaps grow some vegetables. Do some fishing. I understand combat is a huge part of the game but everything has been pushing for more and more combat. The non-combat aspect so far feels like it's either an afterthought or just there to support combat gameplay. Even when they add a new cargo event they're like "What if you need to do cargo.. WhILe EVeRYoNE Is SHOoTIng At You!?" I hoping for more non-combat things in the not so distant future.
@@Christfollower89 agreed. I feel with instanced hangars it shouldn't be possible for someone to sneak in and steal stuff. We need spaces ingame that are 100% safe and not dependent on AI guards or turrets. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder everytime I go into my hangar or hab.
@@Fizzlefuse Good news from the future: They are! People can't sneak into your hangars anymore without being on the elevator with you. If someone somehow does get into your hangar, you can blast 'em with no repercussions because they'll be deemed as trespassing. Its a small victory in the the anti-griefer war, but it's a victory nonetheless.
100% agree. I’m not really a pacifist player per se, I’m okay with there being some risk of combat especially in lower security systems, but I’m definitely more of an explorer/industrialist at heart rather than a space cop, and I feel like the depth of the non combat game loops is what really sets SC apart from just your average AAA FPS game.
I think you hit the nail on the head, once they showed the trailer for 3.24 or well all their videos and such my thoughts have always been "Huh this is an awful lot of combat for a cargo update" I as a person who spends most of my time hauling will say that I only find combat less than 10% of my time hauling, and vs player combat has happened twice over my hundreds and hundreds of cargo runs, I'm sure it'll happen more as the servers grow larger and such, but I doubt it'll be the 80% of the time that CIG videos show even once we get to Pyro. But as you say it could easily be added things along with the blockade runner retrieval event, could also just be bringing needed supplies from elsewhere to the blockaded stations like medicine or food, or mined goods for repairs and so on, because right now I have a feeling the blockade runner events with what they've shown will be heavily focused on the benefit of pirates not everyone else, but that's just my skepticism from blockaded station like missions from other sci fi games with other players
I think if they focused on that and got it going we would suddenly see a more peaceful verse, at least less folks willing to ram/jump you by a station. If they die, and lose it all (not cash buys of course) I think they would be FAR more reluctant to fight.
@@valeriansamborski5844 this. I think prison should be harder. I do "station clean ups" with my friends where we go ant take out all the empty ships if our server is empty. Usually leaves us with a crime stat of 5. We can get out of jail in roughly 15 minutes and have our crime stat erased in under an hour barring no other issues. Outside of that, lower crime stats are easy to get rid of by killing NPCs and taking their ore. At a minimum, I think they should update the prison by making it so that you can't just log off and wait. You actually have to do the time. I'd like to see breaks harder too (not impossible, but more luck needing to be involved than what it currently is). I think there should be bigger sentences, or different jails based on types of crime. If you are a known PVP person, you should be stuck in isolation for a few hours with dumb tasks. Then released into gen pop after. Make prison/crime rep a thing. Higher rewards for those persuing them but higher punishment if they go that route. PVP should be high risk, high reward. Not minimal risk and high reward.
@@valeriansamborski5844 ive had a very similar thought, a lot of games have PVP areas like the Dark Zones in The Division and SC could easily do something like that with how their star systems will work. Pyro could easily be made a PVP zone while Stanton isnt, you can even make elements dynamic by saying "take out a comm array and the planet below becomes PVP enabled until its repaired.
I have over €3K of ships and started out with Star Citizen in 2013 for the Exploration side of the game, as side that has not materialised and instead it is just another war game. I visit the game very rarely these days.
War game? I’m a PvP player and I can tell you it is very hard for me to find actual organic PvP. Most people are literally solo in their cargo ship or whatever. There’s definitely not enough combat in this game
I think the vision was that Combat is what ties everything together. As a scapegoat for “this should hold untill we get new mechanics in” But the other jobs that we have in the game there are hardly any ships for those roles. We need at least 5 variants of a mining ship by now. Maybe 2 more salvage ships. And a few other things. We have unending supply of fighters and cargo. The community aspect and orgs. Require more large ships. A massive mobile base and in the short term we will have those. But large numbers of player’s especially when the servers can handle hundreds. Will feel quite empty without this push and pull of groups of players working together against eachother to make a place for themselves and make the most of what this game has to offer.
I see Star Citizen as an every game. Farming better turn into some kind of farm sim, and I better be able to do trucking on a planet like Eurotruck or some stuff.
Simple they have no clue how to design a non combat/PVP game. The huge naivety on how players will behave 'well' tells you all you need to know. I'm pretty sure a huge majority off the CIG devs and designers never played any considerable length of time on MMO's where open world PVP was a thing and almost all off them aren't even full loot like SC, that adds even more incentive to kill... I swear how many issues that have popped up that anyone that played any PVP enabled MMO would have seen it coming from miles away. Reputation (and consequences linked to it) should have been in from the get go to temper some players urges. But 12yr in and we still have a reputation system that can be coded by a junior dev in an afternoon...
its VERy frustrating that they are going to allow the PvP/gankers/griefers.... to ruin this game because they think that the "danger" of people stealing your stuff adds to the enjoyment. It doesn't.... it takes away from it because there is NO danger of the "pirates" (griefers) to group up and steal.... and ALLLLLLLL the risk is on the one that has to spend the money to hire "protection" purely not to be ganked
one of my biggest issues with SC is the major focus on combat systems, events and gameplay. as you mentioned in recent times thats been greatly improved and was due to the fact that SQ42 is wrapping up development but when they told us about the blockade runner mission i was unfathomably disappointed. I dont particularly enjoy the current state of combat in SC and am primarily, if not solely, a logistics/industrial player the combat focused stuff doesnt interest me much if at all and yet its about the only thing that happens when an event pops up or is created. I get that many of the backend systems and features for non-combat events arent in yet or are very barebones but having SOMETHING for non-combat players would be great.
I am at a point where I think star citizen is not the game for me. I want to be a space trucker where I work for a company to take cargo across systems or even jump points and when I arrive the company I work for has a hangar for me with staff to do the loading and unloading. One of the earliest concept videos I saw was an autopilot landing system of a connie asking for clearance getting radio traffic flying a pattern and landing at area 18. When the ground crew disembarked the npcs were walking up to take the cargo off. That grabbed me and I want that. Sure I could go freelance and do it all myself but for time and cost companies would have these systems in place. And maybe thats part of the progression to work for a corporation before starting your own and take on odd jobs. As for the science I want to take a carrack out for a week or 2 straight real time where the mission is to get into orbit above a planet and turn on the scanners to map it out. Even if i go to sleep in the real world the ship remains in orbit scanning until i wake up and log back in figuratively and literally Or maybe take a mission to go into an asteroid field and map it out and collect trajectory data for possibilities of asteroids colliding with planets or space stations. Return that data to the mission giver which creates a mining order. Maybe that first mission also collects mining samples to analyze for the miners and which ones to target for the richest ore deposits. The idea of inter woven systems and a universe that is alive and adapts is what intrigued me to back star citizen. But all I see muh guns and pvp focus every where. I dont mind getting into a fight occasionally but not every single time I leave port. In secure systems it should be rare at best.
As a PvP fellow in a PvP org, I like the combat. But for those who just want to fire up Star Citizen for something other than combat, CIG does appear to steer them into combat for nearly anything and everything.
it's about the only thing they can get to function somewhat reliably. I am sadened that the promise of such adventure and exploration and a massive universe of scope and professions seems to be lost.
While action shots are easy for creating exciting visuals for marketing CIG should be careful. Frontier did this with ED, big flashy combat filled marketing and then folks would get into Elite Dangerous and be disappointed with the slower pace of the actual game. Have already seen it in the last few years, growing complaints by newer players about the slow pace of things and their worries that key features we've been waiting for will slow just down the game more and 'waste time'. I think part of it could be down to fast exciting trailers tend to attract people who want a fast exciting game, not the thoughtful multi faceted space sim many of us older backers have been waiting for.
Thank you. It's really frustrating. I went back to Eve recently, and the idea of putting guns on my cargo or mining ship makes my skin crawl. Then I climb into my Prospector and wonder why the designer is openly mocking me. So I don't have any tricks to escape, and I'm not very hard to kill, but these guns will save me? No, those are so we can laugh at you when you try to fight back. So this industrial ship is designed to do a job in a dangerous environment, but is also designed to be completely helpless? Correct.
I remember when JT was an illegal package delivery mission, and the players turned into a PvP hot zone. I'm a care bear industrialist. But the vast majority of players seem to want to turn everything good, into a fight. Even if it means attacking me in my outgunned Vulture just for the lulz.
CIGs problem is they struggle making stuff.... fun. They have great features and try hard... but at the end of the day the only stuff I find fun is combat. Not because I only like combat, but rather combat is the only think SC has done well in a way that I actually enjoy, in a way that brings me back.
It's always combat because CIG has not been any good at making other game loops fun (or at all). PvP means combat can be against other players and the lack of good NPCs or narratives or most gameplay gets overlooked for eSport... which is likely why racing is their other loop.
And they absolutely could make other loops look fun. They could advertise exploration by showing off some of the cool places you could go to and sights to see and the ways you can interact with the environment. Not a single shot needs to be fired in any of those clips.
maybe if the combat was fun like it used to be in 2.6.3 back when they had exciting and cool af flight mechanics this wouldn't be much of an issue. I wouldn't be surprised if we get an update to MM making all space combat turn-based (seems to line up with their current goals).
Tie the official controller support together, and we're golden! C'mon man!!! I need controller support to finally become a priority for us handicap players. 😂
Ive been using one for 7yrs on SC, your best bet is using steam to launch SC as a non steam game. Then you can customize your controller layout with all kinds of crazy functionality.
want to see a mirage of a working mechanic? SQ42 story was announced as linear. SQ42 characters are rumored to to be playable in the PU after Story completion. service guarantees Citizenship. Citizenship comes with rights. crime strips Citizenship. so... SQ42 will be broken down for speedrun tactics, so players can restart with a "Citizen of UEE" status when they ultimately die, or get their Citizenship revoked getting sent to prison and want to start over. the recorded voice rubs in the fact that your Citizenship (if you had it to begin with) was revoked by calling you a "Civilian" as you are released.
5 friends have tried playing in the last year. None of them had a fun experience. Features only matter to the already committed. New players seem to despise the janky combat and the plethora of bugs. Hope MMs are sorted before the Polaris comes at the least, Ill try again
Not gonna believe this BUT once the 3.23 finished, the UA-cam AD for Star Citizen slid in PERFECTLY , continuing the COMBAT montage you were showing. I only noticed it was an ad, because the yellow play bar line under the ad, verses the red playbar of your video
00:26 - Already liking the premise of this video. 03:00 - Man, I remember those. Those missions sold me on the game back then. "These handfuls of missions had more substance than all of the missions in Elite." 05:18 - Dont forget the mess of the Starfarer being designed around having a PvP match rather than an industrial workflow. 09:57 - Wouldn't it have been great if there was a mission to smuggle in players to help with the wounded when the mission became the Siege? The whole goal of locating and saving civilians. It would have been a nice apology to the mishandling of marketing around the Nursa as well. Let the FPS crowd assault the defenses, but give a mission for people to stay behind and rescue. Or maybe set up a logistics path for the the FPS crowd. "Carry and deploy boxes here after the area is cleared, and evacuate." 12:00 - Exactly Great video as always
PVP combat is generally janky with desync issues and poor payoff for effort. I don't despise it, and those bugs affect other parts of the game. Still, some of my favourite gameplay, outside of combat, is exploration and orienteering. Back when you had to navigate to the various wrecks for rare loot. There are so many systems that can take the same risk and reward structure to create urgency, or even danger (running out of air, explosive contents) without having to be about murdering other fellow clones.
The second we get data running, I'm getting the Herald or MSR back and living in them. I love so many ships, but every choice literally boils down to "it can do xyz, but if it can't fight, it's a liability", and that sucks.
A commerce gameplay suggestion for the Devs: Design point-to-point planet-side routes between distribution centers with their main purpose being cargo transport...add waypoint stations for refueling, and mark those as conditional Armistice zones. That way, there can be some established rules for cargo hauling, allowing you to plan airborne routes (long-distance) & ground routes (short distance) and actually make some money without an overbearing threat from pirates.
SC has a bit of a lying problem. As well as a manipulation problem. Also a problem with managing resources, conventions and the overall funding model. Other than that it's doing pretty well
The basic idea that humans would live and work in such an environment is laughable. Risk to life has to be balanced - how about highly policed areas where you can do something other than combat. The thought that I might just die at any moment actually puts me off.
@@rwentfordablecrime stats don't matter in the game at the moment, as a matter of a fact, I see in the global chat all the time people with cs laughing about how they like to have a cs because there aren't many bounty hunters and when there are, the people with cs outnumber them anyway. They just avoid the stations other than grim hex and still shoot up players they run across because there is no downside
SC doesny have a marketting problem. They are masterful marketters. What you are seeing as a problem is actually them telling you what they are making. Its a combat game and non-combat players are content for the combat players.
I don't know what you mean exactly. This game, no matter what you do, boils down to shooting each other in the end. Yes, you can mine, salvage or trade. But why are you doing that? To get a nicer ship? To get better guns? To just be immersed? Certainly, a small number of people might be playing for those reasons, but as it stands now, it is to go pew pew in their ships or on land. It's always "watch me steal this ship" or "raid on xy" or "I'M GONNA BE A PIRATE!" The "game" is just not ready for anything else in its state, all these mechanics are buggy and barebones. So who do you market your glorified techdemo to? To the broadest audience possible, the "haha pew pew boom headshot" crowd. PvP is the number one thing in this game, for better or worse. Even if you REALLY enjoy all the other things, the decision to engage in combat is made FOR you 9 out of ten times. So it's smart to market it that way. Maybe when, or better, IF the game nears its completion, we will see more media in the direction you desire.
I would love to see vip transport missions, or tours being implemented. Giving use to the luxury ships currently in the game. Also menial jobs that are safe like cleaning abandoned ships in safe zones, or just picking up trash left by players for slight profits. To me they were pretty on the money with the streetsweeper ROC gag. Its an mmo immersing players in a diverse world would kick it up a notch
There should be an event where you get hired to work as a dockhsnd, like being payed to load and unload cargo at certain areas. You could be payed per unit of cargo, and player ships could land and have players load and unload the ship. It teaches about cargo, gets players involved and could be tied into a larger goal
Yeah, because that will really get people into the game. The whole point in being combat focused is to keep bringing in new players to fund the project. "Hey everyone! Come and play our cool spaceship game where you can play as a dock worker" 😂 Personally I'd love that event, but it isn't how you market a game to the general audience.
@thumpertron you might be right, it would be a hard sell. But according to the poll, not everyone wants to take part in combat, and there might be many that feel that way outside of the player base too. It doesn't mean that this would be a permanent thing, could just be a small event. But yeah, would be a hard sell.
I agree, great points. Having all the promises gameplay loop have more robust gameplay mechanics would make Star Citizen feel like a more vast a complete universe/sand box. Vs how it feels at times with all this space and not many activities. I’m a combat focused citizen but the idea of having all the gameplay loops available fills me with hope that SC can reach for the starts they aim for.
Very good point, I think the Argo Raft was the first ship that came without any weapons mounts(MPUV I know, I mean real ship) also looking more for non-combat gameplay.
The conversation that always got me was around (almost) every ship having guns. Some of these ships such a small amount of firepower - the C8R springs to mind - that you might as well have not bothered. You are not going to start or finish the fight with those guns, you are not going to dissuade anyone either. The only use for those guns is shooting at ground targets.
I always disliked the event but never could put my finger on it. Perfectly explained! It's the lack of utilisation of other game mechanics compared to pewpew and explosions. Star Citizen is an MMO as they said, not a space battle sim
I remember thinking Distribution centers would be cool hubs for exchanging cargo between freighters and smaller ships for planetside delivery. Maybe even pick up a few cargo missions while there. Nope, just arenas for PVP combat.
I used to do a lot of cargo running pre 3.16. Its just been more focused on combat nowadays. I wish there was other space games that look this good and are single player. Sadly, there isn't any space game out there with this level of detail and ship interiors.
I just like a bit of space trucking with my Raft or Hercules... My biggest wish is a couple of in-ship radio stations that can be linked to playlists on streaming services or something like the GTA Radio...
Simple, combat is low effort and they don't have a clue how to get anything else working. I stopped playing 3 years ago and they've only added 2 things to careers since then, salvage and manually loading cargo. To say this game is stagnant is an understatement.
There's a wealth of possibilities when it comes to cargo based gameplay. A planetary event that necessitates a huge quantity of food, or medical supplies. An explosion at a station that requires a bunch of metals to rebuild. Locking expansion of certain systems behind enough deliveries of supplies - like allowing the Pyro jump gate to finally get built with contributions from the players, like the XT mission's supply runs. There are tons of possibilities, and none of them have to be built around the assumption of combat - even though pirates and PVP absolutely should be allowed as part of them. CIG seems to think the non-combat part of the game should be all busywork, rather than compelling, fun gameplay.
Well done SpaceTomato, you finally made a video that I could watch from start to finish. I joined the ranks of SC backers in mid-2016 and by that Christmas I was Concierge and Evocati. But, my wallet has been firmly closed for the last three years because I've lost faith that CIG will deliver a game in which combat is "an ever present possibility" whilst "you can be whatever you want to be". For the last five years minimum, it has been all about the combat - even during Chris Roberts self-proclaimed "year of non-combat activities" (2023 ... as announced at CitizenCon 2022). Note that I said I lost faith in what they WILL deliver, not in what they CAN deliver. To deliver what they promised for the last 12 years, it needs top management to take the bull by the cojones and steer it back on course for the original vision. I'm not convinced they're even thinking about that, let alone trying it.
I cant remember where they said it but it was either a recent ISC or SCL that they said combat is going to be apart of every profession. You can do whatever you want but combat is always going to be a possibility. When every profession will most likely deal with combat at one point or another it's extremely important you get it right such as things like inventory and medical being apart of everything. It's the backbone of the entire game and they are showing this in recent years. Yes, hauling is still important. Cargo is still important. Mining is still important. Combat is just apart of ALL of that. Especially with base building that seems to be the end goal that will even have raiding which will give an even bigger reason to do combat(planetary control).
It is interesting to see how people see potential, and just how much potential they see, in something that the devs can barely get to do the things they try to make it do. Somehow all the flash, empty detail (e.g. the LOD of FPS weapons), and overall visual fidelity of the game (and ESPECIALLY the promo clips) combine to give the impression that there is a lot of there there. When the reality is nothing could be further from the truth. All of those things that people envision largely involve interactions and game mechanics that are not present in the game. And given just how much CIG struggles to give the things they want to give, what prospect are there that those other - outside - visions are ever going to get implemented? Frankly RN I am enjoying Star Citizen less for the actual game play and more as a study in human behaviors.
All development was prioritized to SQ42 so all features we had were from that, the vast majority of the space opera is combat in smaller ships and walking around a larger one, interacting with NPC's. So what'd we get? Walking, shooting and some talking. Hopefully now that's changing, but we'll see.
I can understand why they have focused on mixed or combat centric events in the past, because the other gameplay loops were so painful under developed. But I agree, it's time to change that. I like your idea of a server wide mission to stockpile resources at one location. If they give increased rewards for destroying hostile ships during the event it will incentivize the combat community to protect cargo ships. Pirates already have a lot to gain from disabling and stealing the cargo.
Xenothreat, Siege of Orison, Blockade Runner, Jumptown, I think we are ready for something that focuses on the other parts of Star Citizen. Not saying "no danger allowed", but there's a lot they could do with what's already there.
Yeah, the whole 'we just finished a big combat event, so now we want a trading one', only to have most of those parts being more combat really killed any hype I had for these new trading things. Maybe the normal missions will be good...though if I have to go to the blockaded station I guess that would be a bust...
I like combat fine (not the pvp, but that's a me thing), but yeah, I got this game for exploration/trade promises. And those are horrifically lackluster.
Preach. Amen brother
I agree that they don't have to intentionally incorporate combat into everything. They can account for the possibility but they shouldn't make it a requirement to have combat in every event.
I posted on spectrum they could easily expand the The Gundo Covalex Hub mission: who was Mel Ososky working for? has the smuggling ring moved to another Covalex hub somewhere? can we find data pads around Stanton to locate this smuggling ring? can we inform the Advocacy of their location and end the mission? can we join this smuggling ring instead of giving the Advocacy their location, gain rep with them and smuggle contraband items to locations and make UEC? This going make the MSR USEFUL, since we have to load our own cargo now, the shielded cargo area should be WORKED on and this type mission implemented.
Where there's no conflict, there's no content.
As a 'peaceful player'... thank you for this video.
It's not even that, it's their complete ignorance of what their player base wants... no response to it, no acknowledgement of it. Just fuck you, keep sending us money.
@@b-l1969they know. They just don’t want to directly tell non-combat players that they are content for combat players.
@@Ogata123 Another of Space Tomato's videos has the comment from a guest (who admits to being combat-focused) that combat is 'it' right now to give players something to do until promised content that most players really want is ready. The problem for CIG is that people waiting for content like exploration, data-running; crafting, base building and, notably, a proper dynamic economy may simply desert the game because combat isn't an attractive stop-gap.
The biggest laugh/eye-roll I have had in years was their recent show when they said 'we just had a big combat event, so we wanted to do a trading/cargo focused one, so here is the blockade runner event.'
So...the TRADING event has:
Assault the pirates to get to/out of a station;
Run down the pirates that stile the cargo and disable/destroy them;
Get the cargo;
Assault the pirates to get to/out of the station and unload.
So...no TRADING. Yes to cargo, but by that logic the Xenothreat one could be called the same, becuase we had to get that cargo to Jerico.
The things that have had me so excited about SC wasn't ever the combat. That's nice, I liked it in WC, Privateer and Freelancer, but I'm an explorer at heart, and some trade/combat with that is cool.
For my KS pledge I got the Freelancer, something that, at the time, was touted as being one of the most modular ships and an explorer with trade capabilities, while being able to hold its own, bur tis not a com at ship. Perfect, bargained and done. Cutlass was the more combat ship and dedicated.
Fast forward a decade and the Cutty is one fo the most versatile ships out there while the Lancer has largely been forgotten and outclassed by a half dozen other ships. Exploration is still a nothing-burger, and trade is, for me, less appealing than ever becuase I don't want to waste 20 min loading and unloading stuff when some camper can just pop me and gets no real repercussion for it.
I may be out millions and months of gameplay, the other guy gets a half hour of mining while his mates pick the bones and send him a cut. Or he did it for the lulz and goes to bed, to be free in the morning.
So yeah, I think they have focused far to much on combat, while letting everything else get cast in its shadow/tainted by it.
Watch, real exploration is going to be something like 'oh! You found a never before seen jump point! But pirates somehow!'
They had to add combat for two reasons. One, because a significant, active, and quite vocal segment of the player base want it, But even more tellingly, two, because without combat elements the current game mechanics and features do not provide any way to add much interest to glorified but largely hollow fetch quests.
@@ThomasD66 Aye, this just feels like a missed opportunity to add things that could have made it more interesting.
@@Tillman581 Yeah well most of the systems for trading aren't in the game yet.
@@zeroneutral Would have been nice if they pushed that then, ne?
Exactly. Can't even argue to players of competing space games, because they can do what I wanted from SC for years already and I can just watch pretty graphics of combat I'm not interested in. Feels like wasted money 12 years ago.
The top comment of the penultimate ISC about the Blockade runner event actually says it all: "We wanted to make a cargo event because most of our events are really heavy on combat. So we made an event that's also really heavy on combat."
Because making PVP events is easy. You set up a map, a reason to be there, no challenging NPC AIs to program, and the players make up the rest. Imagine how much harder it would be to make hours worth of PVE missions like MMOs do! Not to mention make a coherent storyline to connect them all.
sounds cool, which MMO?
@@rayfighter FFXIV
@@grygaming5519 which part is the greatest for you?
@@rayfighter All of it.
In short...
I genuinely don't recall ever seeing a chill, peaceful event. They're all the same.... Hey guys we did this event of cat and mouse... we lured the PvE players in so they could get f*cked by the PvP players. Fun times, right?? 😃
And we'll just keep rinsing and repeating this method because thats the only playstyle that should exist. The hunter and the hunted. We don't do peaceful gameplay here. It's not fair to the PvP players that you find a peaceful gaming session after work. We want you fighting tooth and nail 24/7. And if you aren't, you deserve nothing.. ☺️
As someone who's wholeheartedly focused on PVP first and PVE second - I fully think you hit the nail on the head here. There's so many games out there already focused on combat. People out there in the verse doing their thing is exactly what SC needs. With the nominal risk of someone like me pilfering all their stuff. My hope is that there is higher focus on exploration to chart space, rather than everything just being fully open and braindead out of the box. Discovering cool things, new places and analyzing them, uploading it to data storage on my ship and selling it for a profit is cool game loops which can shift the focus on doing menial tasks that are lackluster just to get money to buy yet another ship.
Just like anytime they mention salvage or mining events, it's just an excuse for PVP.
Ofc. That because the core gameplay mechanics is based all about combat and PvP. It Always Had been this way. And never have they said something else.
@@NotUnymous but then they try to sell it to the miners as a game loop for THEM.
@@Dracounguis As a player mostly interested in mining and industry, I've long since realized this game was never meant for people like me. Not only does CIG not give a flying fuck about us, the rest of the player base just laughs at us for existing. Best thing I ever did is selling my account. Now if only YT would stop recommending me videos about this circus...
@@chrishoppner150 yeah when I first pledged in 2013 I was expecting a Privateer/Starlancer like game. (And it being done many years ago.) SC is the poster child of feature creep on steroids. 🫤
Please define "PvP".
I'm not joking here. People have a fundamentally misunderstanding what "player versus player" actually means. For most it's just fighting other players: "me vs them". That idea isn't entirely wrong as most games do not support any other way of interaction between players.
In Star Citizen however, PvP is not just combat. If you're a freighter pilot looking for a lucrative trading route, someone else will do too. That puts you in competition with the other guy. You both buy stuff, you both sell stuff, no fighting involved. But since the prizes may change depending on offer and demand, the one who buys early and sells early usually gets to make the profit as the span between buying and selling prizes is bigger. And since it's a competition between two players who do not cooperate, it's a form of PvP.
Similar idea about racing. You, your friends, other guys, take part in a racing event. It's a competitive event, of course, and that puts you into a "player versus player" scenario. Again, this is PvP. Just without weapons and combat.
The "classic understanding" what PvP is, does not really apply on Star Citizen. However, CIG -has- a tendency to add "combat" to any given scenario, regardless if it's appropriate or not. They need to rethink that approach, as one day "Death of a Spaceman" turns into a thing and I don't want to risk my skin every single time I leave a spacedock.
Wasn't exploration the activity that over 50% of players are most looking forward when they did that questionnaire years ago?
How much do you hear from CIG about 'procedurally generated' worlds lately?
Ya that’s what I’m waiting on, true exploration …not a bunch of pre-found jump points
@@Tekjive Exploration requires a huge universe to explore while PvP requires keeping everyone confined in a compact area. So it would probably be better to give up and go play No Man's Sky, which incidentally just hit 5.0, has disablable multiplayer and no further monetization after buying the game. And, in all honestly, looks better.
That's not what CIG heard. When we said we wanted exploration, CIG heard, "We want exploration...with COMBAT!!!"
@@clovernacknime6984 Have around 3,000 hours in NMS and do play it far more than Star Citizen nowadays since there is still no true exploration; or farming (no Endeavor yet); or crafting; or base building (no Pioneer yet); or passenger transport (no Genesis Starliner or Spirit E1 yet)... which means no extra dosh for CIG as a bottom-line.
It's because PVE content (whether combat or peaceful) requires functional AI and servers that aren't bugged/broken/hopelessly desynched. CIG hasn't been able to deliver that so far in year 12.
It's getting far better as the server tech finally comes into the game.
@@zeroneutral Odd, I've found 3.23 to be the worst patch for server Desynch going back 2 years. AI on live is also usually braindead, with their much vaunted baristas doing dumb stuff like dropping the drink behind the bar, if they even respond, while FPS gameplay is a crapshoot between braindead cattle to the slaughter or 360 noscope wizards depending on how the server is feeling. Mining has been an invisible asteroidapalooza. TL:DR; No it's not getting better, it MIGHT get better if they sort out their nonsense. More likely, the same people that introduced the desynch bugs in to their monolithic server architecture are going to be responsible for much worse and harder to debug issues in their distributed architecture.
And if they make an event that doesn't have these features, they can't exactly keep testing and iterating.
@@_rustyxnails True.
Yeah, SC needs something other than combat events. Elite Dangerous does this by providing two options during a 'Community Goal', one is combat and the other isn't.
It annoyed me a bit as a new player that several missions that sounded at first like they should be non-combat (the one to deploy probes, and the ones to investigate wrecks, for instance), were worded so as to make it clear that they had combat elements. It just seemed so unnecessary. For a new player, flying somewhere, deploying some probes, and flying back is already a learning experience. Why add anything more? A a result, a few months later I still haven't done any of those missions.
I've done multiple "Deploy Probe" contracts and have never encountered any interference by pirates (be it NPC or player).
I would like to see facilities designed like working facilities and not PvP arenas. They can't keep harping upon 'realism' for so many other things but then have blatantly game-y things like that. Pick a lane! You making a simulator or a game!
@@Dracounguis they are actually planned as such ones, but its as always in further development xd
I'm still salty that distribution centers came out and they just end up being bigger FPS bunkers.
They don't make a simulation and they don't make a game, they make money. We all fell for that liar.
We barely got server tech... More patience is required.
@@derjadebaum9159 Where is the lie?
Some really good points. I suspect that making everything show combat is more to do with marketing psychology, and what makes people spend money, but I think the point you make about signalling what Star Citizen is going to be all about is an important one.
It's a bummer that the marketing drives the messaging, but hopefully that does shift to show a bit more of what the game can offer!
@@SpaceTomato Why would they? It's bad for business. Least amount of effort for biggest gain. I'd wager that around 2015 they started deviating from they original dream of building a universe and started focus on gaining more and more money. Because they realized the backers were treating them like gods. And it's very easy to fall from that position. Deviancy of normalcy.
12 years and what do you have, objectively? Not much.
To compare. It took 18 months to design and build the SR-71 and it took around a decade to develop economic viable EUV technology.
And CIG cannot manage a pure software project in 12 years. Something is very wrong here.
The problem is they understand the psychology of FOMO too well and are taking expertly severe disadvantage of it towards it's backers and consumers.
A goal without a deadline is just a dream.
Regarding: "What makes people spend money"; as a backer who became involved seven years ago, the combat trend and focus in Star Citizen has made me stop spending with CIG in order to watch and wait. By pushing combat CIG is limiting its income. Space Tomato's survey suggests that under one fifth of players favour combat while three quarters want exploration and industrial gameplay. Combat not only appeals to a relatively small proportion of players but the majority can spend relatively little to play. The cheapest starter ship is fine for anyone who prefers FPS, on-foot combat and even heavy fighters for ship-to-ship combat are 'only' a couple of hundred dollars. CIG is growing and needs regular, significant income to keep the lights on. The focus on combat looks to be at odds with that. That matters because if CIG goes under, the promise of exploration; farming; crafting; passenger transport; base building; data-as-cargo and a dynamic economy all ends for those of us who backed for that.
Even in the Hull C commercial there's combat. A strickly heavy cargo ship flies through an active war zone for some reason. CIG is unable to even imagine any loop without combat in it in one form or another
Im actually really sick & tired of everything being focused on combat. It feels like that's the ONLY thing the devs actually care about and the only thing they test internally.
Which is why we got Master Modes before they even bothered to fix docking or the Hull-C.
To be fair, we're only on year twelve... they need to gather data to be able to get all the combat systems, damage, weapon balance, etc all sorted. It's not like they've had plenty of time to do this... ;)
Dont fear. 4.0 will introduce a whole new system which will be much more peaceful with way less combat
I have zero interest in PVP or pyro.
Would love more industrial game play.
If i could only focus on PVE in this game i would actually play it. It looks amazing but have no interest in PVP.
@@cisco9148 Same.
I can't wait for Terra to open up. Its the second most important star system in the Empire (Sol always coming first), and the first High-Sec system in the game.
The community's feeling of anti-combat-focus is the exact reason why the Argo MPUV won ship of the year. It's the only ship that doesn't have ANY weapons and CIG completely missed the point that we want to see more ships without weapons and more non-combat play opportunities. The entire universe of Firefly/Serenity happened aboard a smuggling ship that had zero weapons and the best adventures. That's the gameplay style than many people want to experience. Currently there is little to no benefit for not having weapons because they focus so heavily on combat. They need more ships that have weapon slots that don't, by default, have weapons equipped so players can add weapons, if they want, but the ship can be marketed as non-combat.
@bperras Hola, in firefly serenity. Universe. Malcom Reynolds fought for what he believed in. Which was the people around him. And profit haha.
If not for the bugs, once stealth mechanics ( remember the loud crybaby to lead the feds away from a power down ship?) And the. Fix the ship Kaylee portion of the game I'm good haha only 10 years to go haha.
Creating player demand for a "Serenity Class Transport" would involve implementing game mechanics like barring armed vessels from entering armistice zones and/or having entire systems be HighSec, where the only ships are either authorized security or attacked on sight. But the game does not remotely have the systems or features needed to support any of that.
@@ThomasD66 cutlace black my guy.
They did plenty of combat . Even added a strap on cannon for the reavers. Mostley fps style stuff.
@@TheFuzzywhumpus Yeah, mostly FPS, but they also shot that space snare thing with Jayne's rifle by cracking the cargo doors. Silly part of that was that smokeless powder does not need an atmosphere to function.
@bperras *"The community's feeling of anti-combat-focus is the exact reason why the Argo MPUV won ship of the year."* - That maybe why you voted for it, and why people you know voted for it, but looking at Spectrum, in game chat, and various discords gives a much different picture.
Most people voted for the MPUV because content creators pushed it as a meme and mobilisied hundreds and thousands of people to get it done. People were literally encouraged to make new accounts just to have more votes to get it across the line, as a laugh. It was also to stop another popular ship--I think it was the Carrack, iirc--from winning.
That said I agree with your wider points about the importance of other game loops.
Cheers!
Inspect and repair type low level missions around the exterior of stations and cities would be something I'd welcome. As a gentle introduction to engineering gameplay I'm imagining a power substation relay that has knocked out a section of city or station. Take the mission to find the malfunctioning node, swap it out, and have a dual payment in UEC as well as seeing that part of the city/station lights come back online with radio traffic saying thanks. Later 'heist' style gameplay could similarly knock out security cameras, power, or comms networks on the exteriors of stations where a bounty is hiding. Would also liven up the stations with little ships buzzing around with maybe some nice welding light effects associated with repair.
You said a non-combat dynamic event "wouldn't be as exciting" but I'd be way more excited about that than I am about Blockade Runner. I just do not care about combat, and I'm longing for the day when non-combat careers feel like part of a real, changing world with events that affect them, rather than just the exact same loop over and over again.
noncombat careers are content for pirates/griefers
I feel like there’s a lack in the type of challenge presented, the ‘complication’ for each mission is combat. A notable exception is some of the unstable material deliveries, which is a nice touch.
It’s frustrating that they are spending so much time making sure non-combat professions require extensive, time-consuming and often tedious preparation and execution then making absolutely positively, certain that someone can wreck that entire process with zero investment combat, suffering few repercussions. Being able to trash other players’ time investment in a whim seems core to the game’s design.
There’s got to be risk, planning and care. But it needs to be on both sides. At the moment only one side is ever risking anything and if you’re not shooting, you’re losing.
And yet when I whine about the flight model some people defend it by saying "who cares if the flight model is a bit arcady. The game isn't all about combat. That's just a small part of the game". When every freaking ship in the game, even racers, have guns on them, the game is all about combat.
I really hope that the game doesn't double down on PVP. Way back when I played WoW, I always hated the aspect of PVP servers where I really couldn't move freely about the world without a group to protect myself from being ganked. I like group play but I really hope there's a way to make a modest living doing solo play relatively safely.
THEN WHY WOLD YOU PLAY ON A PVP SERVER! Dear gods. I can understand not wanting to pvp. But omg in that case YOU selected the pvp environment. And then still complain?!
@@RasakBlood Calm down man. I just made a comment. I did end up moving to a PVE server on WoW once I figured it all out. I don't have that option on SC.
If the game is balanced for PvP with PvP in mind FIRST it’ll give everyone (regardless of play style) the tools to deal with players focused solely on PvP and leverage the odds in your favour if you prepare yourself for the eventuality.
For example, current balance is still allowing fighters to dominate against multi crew, whereas most PvPers (like the much hated Avenger_one) want this to stop, they want the balance to be so that if you have a multi crew cargo ship it’ll take a multiplayer assault to bring you down with casualties for the pirates. If you’re in a hull C or an A2 filled to the brim with valuable cargo and you’re hauling through pyro, in a PvP balanced SC, you need to hire a fighter escort so that while you make a run for it, using the turrets to keep fighters away and preventing anyone from boarding, the escorts would make sure that you would escape by evening the odds or making it simply not worth the risk for would be attackers. Or risk it, go solo and keep all the profit. But don’t blame the pirate players for making yourself easy pickings.
Right now 2 buccaneers and a mantis would tear you to shreds and steal your stuff because of a lack of balance.
If combat isn’t balanced/fixed first then there’s no point in you hauling, mining, savaging if someone is simply going to take it from you despite being in a ship that outclasses the pirate.
Even right now, you know there are pirate players. Hire a PvP player or a fighter escort to protect you/die for you. If they succeed offer them a percentage of the profit.
As people have noted, there’s no point doing non combat because combat might come your way and it’s unfair and unbalanced. So first comes the balance then everything else.
@@RasakBlood Some games put resources vital to progression in PvP zones, thus forcing non-PvP players to enter PvP zones if they want to get better gear or resources.
I am a combat player, but showcasing combat when the combat experience is really server mesh dependent… is odd to me. The performace quality needed to make combat feel fluid isnt there and they should shift to all the other phenominal game loops where latency isnt as much of a hinderance to their experience.
1000‰ agree... Aren't there already a million existing FPS and plenty of flight shooters? I don't mind there being *some* combat opportunities, but it sure seems like it's the primary focus and not enough time and energy is spent on the other loops that would make SC unique and great .
Go play No Mans sky or something, pvp will not be leaving, and this is a primarily PvP focused game.
@@El1qt Its only a PvP game because they haven't done anything else. It never was suppose to be a primarily PvP game. Also PvP MMO's die quick. When the none PvP players leave so do most of the PvP players because there are no easy targets anymore so only the most dominate PvPers are having fun. Everyone else hates it and leaves.
hum, I seem to notice in the ISC or whatever in which they spoke about cargo missions and EVR system that cargo missions might involve "risks" and .... "combat". Always. Fucking. Combat. Pffffffffffffff
@AlexandreParchomenko yeah because it's a sandbox game with pvp. You're never completely safe , if you don't want any risk of combat go play No Man's Sky.
@@thumpertron NMS has plenty of combat. It's not very challenging, but it does exist. In fact, you get thrown directly into combat about once every 5-7 times you jump to a new system.
@valeriansamborski5844 What you just suggested would absolutely ruin the game and make it the boring thing imaginable. There is no point in any game loop unless it involves some risk.
If you've actually been following the development of the game, you'll know that they're definitely NOT going to limit combat to specific areas or make it 'consensual'. Those ideas are so far off the mark from what CIG wants to make that I'm shocked you're even playing Star Citizen in the first place.
@@thumpertronboring for who? For you and your ilk. If you really believe that everyone wants PVP so badly, why would you care if there were areas restricted to it? You would still always have lots of people to pvp with, isn't that what you want? No, I don't think that is what you want, I think you want to find players who don't spend hours and hours learning to fight in combat fighters because that means no risk for you. A very large number of people want the other game loops in SC which means we dint spend hours learning to fight. But you don't want us to be able to play the game OUR way, which by the way is what CIG has said about the sim, you want to force all of us to play the way YOU want.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. When all your game system is built to support is combat...
I'm going to enjoy the tears when Death of a Spaceman is implemented. A lot of the FPS crowd are going to move to the 'Arcade' versions of SC.
Looking forward to "Death of a Spaceman". Perhaps most player will start value their virtual lives and try to stay alive. This may translate into several changes of how certain situations get solved. I doubt people will fight to the death if other options are available. A fleet battle won't turn both fleets to dust, but the losing side may actually pull out. Rescue teams will be sent to pick up any survivors. Elite Dangerous has the "Fuel Rats" - and there's at least one organization dedicated to SAR jobs in Star Citizen. Organizations will have their own SAR teams to. Logistics are more and more important. Preparation for battle may take hours or even days instead minutes.
While most games ONLY feature conflict and combat for players, Star Citizen may turn into a game where an ordinary player ant to avoid combat and live a peaceful life. Other players may actually enjoy the thrill of a "hardcore" experience with consequences. I'm among them, although my focus is not combat in Star Citizen, but exploration. I do my part in my organization and will pilot a fighter if we need to defend ourselves 'though.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 I am looking forward to Death of a Spaceman as well. The thrill of going outside of the safe areas of space to locate lucrative resources for exploitation, as the game gets fleshed out is really appealing. Since September 2023, I've been treating the game as if death of space man is currently implemented. I play fairly often, and I haven't been killed by a player in nearly 8 months (assuming I even encounter anyone). People have tried to kill me, but I've always managed to slip away. I have certainly died from bugs out of my control, but I mention this to support your point that hopefully other players will change the way they play when they understand death has consequences for their character and it needs to be the last thing you want to happen. My number will come up eventually, as all things come to an end, but it's been really fun to play this way.
I fear that Pvpers could care less about death of a spaceman, they have nothing to lose, they don't even wear full armor when they fly, just a sperm suit and helmet that is free. With insurance on ships, they won't even lose those and they will just recall them and a few minutes later be back at it.
The people most affected by DOSM will be the non PvP crowd who are trying to build industries
Honestly, death of a spaceman is gonna change/evolve before we see it, it won't be anything we recognize from what's been described over the years because too mu much of th3 games focus has changed.
You will look forward to it until players who dont care about in game money and just want to troll kill you in game with their cash purchased ship. All DOASM does is make the schadenfreude that much sweeter when you kill a “carebear” knowing they just lost a ton of progress that they actually care about.
Unwanted PvP has always been a problem in this game. It's hard to do most anything without getting jumped. The people doing it don't even want challenging PvP. They seem to avoid PvP with other combat vessels, choosing instead to go after soft targets like cargo ships.
This game is not for you. Have you tried Starfield?
Lies "It's hard to do most anything without getting jumped"
I've been playing since 2021 doing all the game loops and never been jumped.
@@thumpertron This channel is not for you, have you tried some Call of Duty youtuber?
Hard disagree that unwanted PvP is a major problem. 1) It’s easy to avoid other people, and 2) given current server limitations you only come across people who want to fight when you go to known hotspots. There’s plenty to do outside those areas.
Exactly 💯, they are just cheap thug bullies. They will continue to do this until it crime does not pay
I could not agree more. 100% agree with you 🍅. I love combat but a little variety goes a long way. Give me Cargo, Mining, Salvage, Data Running, Exploring along with Combat. Then you not only made a game but a culture for everyone.
we have been waiting for medical, bounty hunting, salvage, etc for literally years. i never play anymore despite having 10+ ships
This alpha is shit. Better space games out there.
They could make a much better and diverse cargo game by hiring an Economics major and allowing them to design values and market moves.
Didn't they have some genius "quanta" guy working on economics for the past 12 years???
Ive been saying this from the start that the PvE non-combat folks need to be thrown a bigger bone.
Call me a "care bear" if you want, fine, but I enjoy it when there are places in games where you just can't do combat. Where you can just chill. Decorate your home. Explore at your leisure. Maybe mine a little or salvage. Perhaps grow some vegetables. Do some fishing.
I understand combat is a huge part of the game but everything has been pushing for more and more combat. The non-combat aspect so far feels like it's either an afterthought or just there to support combat gameplay. Even when they add a new cargo event they're like "What if you need to do cargo.. WhILe EVeRYoNE Is SHOoTIng At You!?"
I hoping for more non-combat things in the not so distant future.
Yah I agree, the Hangar invasion is completely stupid. I hate when I have someone else trying to follow me into my hangar
@@Christfollower89 agreed. I feel with instanced hangars it shouldn't be possible for someone to sneak in and steal stuff.
We need spaces ingame that are 100% safe and not dependent on AI guards or turrets. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder everytime I go into my hangar or hab.
@@Fizzlefuse Good news from the future: They are! People can't sneak into your hangars anymore without being on the elevator with you. If someone somehow does get into your hangar, you can blast 'em with no repercussions because they'll be deemed as trespassing. Its a small victory in the the anti-griefer war, but it's a victory nonetheless.
In general, Star Citizen has a problem where all the incentives are about working against other players instead of working WITH other players.
100% agree. I’m not really a pacifist player per se, I’m okay with there being some risk of combat especially in lower security systems, but I’m definitely more of an explorer/industrialist at heart rather than a space cop, and I feel like the depth of the non combat game loops is what really sets SC apart from just your average AAA FPS game.
I think you hit the nail on the head, once they showed the trailer for 3.24 or well all their videos and such my thoughts have always been "Huh this is an awful lot of combat for a cargo update" I as a person who spends most of my time hauling will say that I only find combat less than 10% of my time hauling, and vs player combat has happened twice over my hundreds and hundreds of cargo runs, I'm sure it'll happen more as the servers grow larger and such, but I doubt it'll be the 80% of the time that CIG videos show even once we get to Pyro. But as you say it could easily be added things along with the blockade runner retrieval event, could also just be bringing needed supplies from elsewhere to the blockaded stations like medicine or food, or mined goods for repairs and so on, because right now I have a feeling the blockade runner events with what they've shown will be heavily focused on the benefit of pirates not everyone else, but that's just my skepticism from blockaded station like missions from other sci fi games with other players
The more I see these videos on this half a billion, ten year in development game, less I take Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky for granted.
The focus on combat confuses me when we know CIG is still going forward with the Death of a Spaceman design.
I think if they focused on that and got it going we would suddenly see a more peaceful verse, at least less folks willing to ram/jump you by a station. If they die, and lose it all (not cash buys of course) I think they would be FAR more reluctant to fight.
@@valeriansamborski5844 this. I think prison should be harder. I do "station clean ups" with my friends where we go ant take out all the empty ships if our server is empty. Usually leaves us with a crime stat of 5.
We can get out of jail in roughly 15 minutes and have our crime stat erased in under an hour barring no other issues. Outside of that, lower crime stats are easy to get rid of by killing NPCs and taking their ore.
At a minimum, I think they should update the prison by making it so that you can't just log off and wait. You actually have to do the time. I'd like to see breaks harder too (not impossible, but more luck needing to be involved than what it currently is).
I think there should be bigger sentences, or different jails based on types of crime. If you are a known PVP person, you should be stuck in isolation for a few hours with dumb tasks. Then released into gen pop after.
Make prison/crime rep a thing. Higher rewards for those persuing them but higher punishment if they go that route. PVP should be high risk, high reward. Not minimal risk and high reward.
@@valeriansamborski5844 ive had a very similar thought, a lot of games have PVP areas like the Dark Zones in The Division and SC could easily do something like that with how their star systems will work. Pyro could easily be made a PVP zone while Stanton isnt, you can even make elements dynamic by saying "take out a comm array and the planet below becomes PVP enabled until its repaired.
DOAS is as much vaporware as exploration game play is.
@@Tillman581the only thing a griefer needs is what can be cash bought. So what are they losing in DOAS?
I have over €3K of ships and started out with Star Citizen in 2013 for the Exploration side of the game, as side that has not materialised and instead it is just another war game. I visit the game very rarely these days.
War game? I’m a PvP player and I can tell you it is very hard for me to find actual organic PvP. Most people are literally solo in their cargo ship or whatever. There’s definitely not enough combat in this game
I think the vision was that Combat is what ties everything together. As a scapegoat for “this should hold untill we get new mechanics in”
But the other jobs that we have in the game there are hardly any ships for those roles.
We need at least 5 variants of a mining ship by now.
Maybe 2 more salvage ships.
And a few other things.
We have unending supply of fighters and cargo.
The community aspect and orgs. Require more large ships.
A massive mobile base and in the short term we will have those.
But large numbers of player’s especially when the servers can handle hundreds. Will feel quite empty without this push and pull of groups of players working together against eachother to make a place for themselves and make the most of what this game has to offer.
I see Star Citizen as an every game. Farming better turn into some kind of farm sim, and I better be able to do trucking on a planet like Eurotruck or some stuff.
Simple they have no clue how to design a non combat/PVP game. The huge naivety on how players will behave 'well' tells you all you need to know. I'm pretty sure a huge majority off the CIG devs and designers never played any considerable length of time on MMO's where open world PVP was a thing and almost all off them aren't even full loot like SC, that adds even more incentive to kill... I swear how many issues that have popped up that anyone that played any PVP enabled MMO would have seen it coming from miles away. Reputation (and consequences linked to it) should have been in from the get go to temper some players urges. But 12yr in and we still have a reputation system that can be coded by a junior dev in an afternoon...
Agree and it is pretty maddening.
Most of their devs seems to come from a FPS / racing background.
its VERy frustrating that they are going to allow the PvP/gankers/griefers.... to ruin this game because they think that the "danger" of people stealing your stuff adds to the enjoyment. It doesn't.... it takes away from it because there is NO danger of the "pirates" (griefers) to group up and steal.... and ALLLLLLLL the risk is on the one that has to spend the money to hire "protection" purely not to be ganked
one of my biggest issues with SC is the major focus on combat systems, events and gameplay. as you mentioned in recent times thats been greatly improved and was due to the fact that SQ42 is wrapping up development but when they told us about the blockade runner mission i was unfathomably disappointed. I dont particularly enjoy the current state of combat in SC and am primarily, if not solely, a logistics/industrial player the combat focused stuff doesnt interest me much if at all and yet its about the only thing that happens when an event pops up or is created.
I get that many of the backend systems and features for non-combat events arent in yet or are very barebones but having SOMETHING for non-combat players would be great.
I am at a point where I think star citizen is not the game for me.
I want to be a space trucker where I work for a company to take cargo across systems or even jump points and when I arrive the company I work for has a hangar for me with staff to do the loading and unloading. One of the earliest concept videos I saw was an autopilot landing system of a connie asking for clearance getting radio traffic flying a pattern and landing at area 18. When the ground crew disembarked the npcs were walking up to take the cargo off. That grabbed me and I want that. Sure I could go freelance and do it all myself but for time and cost companies would have these systems in place. And maybe thats part of the progression to work for a corporation before starting your own and take on odd jobs.
As for the science I want to take a carrack out for a week or 2 straight real time where the mission is to get into orbit above a planet and turn on the scanners to map it out. Even if i go to sleep in the real world the ship remains in orbit scanning until i wake up and log back in figuratively and literally
Or maybe take a mission to go into an asteroid field and map it out and collect trajectory data for possibilities of asteroids colliding with planets or space stations. Return that data to the mission giver which creates a mining order. Maybe that first mission also collects mining samples to analyze for the miners and which ones to target for the richest ore deposits.
The idea of inter woven systems and a universe that is alive and adapts is what intrigued me to back star citizen. But all I see muh guns and pvp focus every where. I dont mind getting into a fight occasionally but not every single time I leave port. In secure systems it should be rare at best.
There are space games already out there that already do this
As a PvP fellow in a PvP org, I like the combat. But for those who just want to fire up Star Citizen for something other than combat, CIG does appear to steer them into combat for nearly anything and everything.
Sandbox tools such as the ability to set up our own holograph waypoints for custom racetracks would be a good start
The devs currently struggling to make instanced hangars function semi-reliably read stuff like that and start to cold sweat.
it's about the only thing they can get to function somewhat reliably. I am sadened that the promise of such adventure and exploration and a massive universe of scope and professions seems to be lost.
I was laughing and the recent video when they said that they wanted to focus on a cargo event and then immediately started talking about combat
😂 Too true.
While action shots are easy for creating exciting visuals for marketing CIG should be careful.
Frontier did this with ED, big flashy combat filled marketing and then folks would get into Elite Dangerous and be disappointed with the slower pace of the actual game.
Have already seen it in the last few years, growing complaints by newer players about the slow pace of things and their worries that key features we've been waiting for will slow just down the game more and 'waste time'.
I think part of it could be down to fast exciting trailers tend to attract people who want a fast exciting game, not the thoughtful multi faceted space sim many of us older backers have been waiting for.
Thank you. It's really frustrating. I went back to Eve recently, and the idea of putting guns on my cargo or mining ship makes my skin crawl. Then I climb into my Prospector and wonder why the designer is openly mocking me. So I don't have any tricks to escape, and I'm not very hard to kill, but these guns will save me? No, those are so we can laugh at you when you try to fight back. So this industrial ship is designed to do a job in a dangerous environment, but is also designed to be completely helpless? Correct.
Disable your weapons. It will reduce your signature, making you harder to find.
I remember when JT was an illegal package delivery mission, and the players turned into a PvP hot zone.
I'm a care bear industrialist. But the vast majority of players seem to want to turn everything good, into a fight.
Even if it means attacking me in my outgunned Vulture just for the lulz.
CIGs problem is they struggle making stuff.... fun. They have great features and try hard... but at the end of the day the only stuff I find fun is combat. Not because I only like combat, but rather combat is the only think SC has done well in a way that I actually enjoy, in a way that brings me back.
It's always combat because CIG has not been any good at making other game loops fun (or at all). PvP means combat can be against other players and the lack of good NPCs or narratives or most gameplay gets overlooked for eSport... which is likely why racing is their other loop.
And they absolutely could make other loops look fun. They could advertise exploration by showing off some of the cool places you could go to and sights to see and the ways you can interact with the environment. Not a single shot needs to be fired in any of those clips.
Agreed that the game needs A LOT more content and depth for the gameloops that aren't combat.
Well?
The game is called "Star Citizen"
Not "Star Call of Duty"
1 mile wide. 1 inch deep.
Combat.... that isn't very good to begin with.
maybe if the combat was fun like it used to be in 2.6.3 back when they had exciting and cool af flight mechanics this wouldn't be much of an issue. I wouldn't be surprised if we get an update to MM making all space combat turn-based (seems to line up with their current goals).
Instanced on a grid turn based mechanics.
Tie the official controller support together, and we're golden! C'mon man!!! I need controller support to finally become a priority for us handicap players. 😂
No joke got a good buddy that can't play without it
Ive been using one for 7yrs on SC, your best bet is using steam to launch SC as a non steam game. Then you can customize your controller layout with all kinds of crazy functionality.
They’ll 100% add Rhino repeaters onto space cows so they can fight back against farmers 😂
want to see a mirage of a working mechanic?
SQ42 story was announced as linear. SQ42 characters are rumored to to be playable in the PU after Story completion. service guarantees Citizenship. Citizenship comes with rights. crime strips Citizenship.
so... SQ42 will be broken down for speedrun tactics, so players can restart with a "Citizen of UEE" status when they ultimately die, or get their Citizenship revoked getting sent to prison and want to start over.
the recorded voice rubs in the fact that your Citizenship (if you had it to begin with) was revoked by calling you a "Civilian" as you are released.
5 friends have tried playing in the last year. None of them had a fun experience. Features only matter to the already committed. New players seem to despise the janky combat and the plethora of bugs. Hope MMs are sorted before the Polaris comes at the least, Ill try again
Long live SaltyMike
Not gonna believe this BUT once the 3.23 finished, the UA-cam AD for Star Citizen slid in PERFECTLY , continuing the COMBAT montage you were showing. I only noticed it was an ad, because the yellow play bar line under the ad, verses the red playbar of your video
00:26 - Already liking the premise of this video.
03:00 - Man, I remember those. Those missions sold me on the game back then. "These handfuls of missions had more substance than all of the missions in Elite."
05:18 - Dont forget the mess of the Starfarer being designed around having a PvP match rather than an industrial workflow.
09:57 - Wouldn't it have been great if there was a mission to smuggle in players to help with the wounded when the mission became the Siege? The whole goal of locating and saving civilians. It would have been a nice apology to the mishandling of marketing around the Nursa as well. Let the FPS crowd assault the defenses, but give a mission for people to stay behind and rescue. Or maybe set up a logistics path for the the FPS crowd. "Carry and deploy boxes here after the area is cleared, and evacuate."
12:00 - Exactly
Great video as always
PVP combat is generally janky with desync issues and poor payoff for effort. I don't despise it, and those bugs affect other parts of the game. Still, some of my favourite gameplay, outside of combat, is exploration and orienteering. Back when you had to navigate to the various wrecks for rare loot. There are so many systems that can take the same risk and reward structure to create urgency, or even danger (running out of air, explosive contents) without having to be about murdering other fellow clones.
The second we get data running, I'm getting the Herald or MSR back and living in them. I love so many ships, but every choice literally boils down to "it can do xyz, but if it can't fight, it's a liability", and that sucks.
A commerce gameplay suggestion for the Devs: Design point-to-point planet-side routes between distribution centers with their main purpose being cargo transport...add waypoint stations for refueling, and mark those as conditional Armistice zones. That way, there can be some established rules for cargo hauling, allowing you to plan airborne routes (long-distance) & ground routes (short distance) and actually make some money without an overbearing threat from pirates.
SC has a bit of a lying problem. As well as a manipulation problem. Also a problem with managing resources, conventions and the overall funding model. Other than that it's doing pretty well
The basic idea that humans would live and work in such an environment is laughable. Risk to life has to be balanced - how about highly policed areas where you can do something other than combat. The thought that I might just die at any moment actually puts me off.
Loving the deeper videos and the newer “quick bites” as well!!! Keep it up!
You didn’t have server lag as one of the things constantly fighting you 😂
I like cargo and salvaging... I am so sick of being hijacked with little to no recourse....
They just make us PvP fodder
Are there NPC security that jumps in or do griefing players rack up bounties in themselves?
@@rwentfordablecrime stats don't matter in the game at the moment, as a matter of a fact, I see in the global chat all the time people with cs laughing about how they like to have a cs because there aren't many bounty hunters and when there are, the people with cs outnumber them anyway. They just avoid the stations other than grim hex and still shoot up players they run across because there is no downside
SC doesny have a marketting problem. They are masterful marketters. What you are seeing as a problem is actually them telling you what they are making. Its a combat game and non-combat players are content for the combat players.
I don't know what you mean exactly. This game, no matter what you do, boils down to shooting each other in the end. Yes, you can mine, salvage or trade. But why are you doing that? To get a nicer ship? To get better guns? To just be immersed? Certainly, a small number of people might be playing for those reasons, but as it stands now, it is to go pew pew in their ships or on land. It's always "watch me steal this ship" or "raid on xy" or "I'M GONNA BE A PIRATE!"
The "game" is just not ready for anything else in its state, all these mechanics are buggy and barebones. So who do you market your glorified techdemo to? To the broadest audience possible, the "haha pew pew boom headshot" crowd.
PvP is the number one thing in this game, for better or worse. Even if you REALLY enjoy all the other things, the decision to engage in combat is made FOR you 9 out of ten times. So it's smart to market it that way. Maybe when, or better, IF the game nears its completion, we will see more media in the direction you desire.
I would love to see vip transport missions, or tours being implemented. Giving use to the luxury ships currently in the game. Also menial jobs that are safe like cleaning abandoned ships in safe zones, or just picking up trash left by players for slight profits. To me they were pretty on the money with the streetsweeper ROC gag. Its an mmo immersing players in a diverse world would kick it up a notch
There should be an event where you get hired to work as a dockhsnd, like being payed to load and unload cargo at certain areas. You could be payed per unit of cargo, and player ships could land and have players load and unload the ship. It teaches about cargo, gets players involved and could be tied into a larger goal
Yeah, because that will really get people into the game. The whole point in being combat focused is to keep bringing in new players to fund the project.
"Hey everyone! Come and play our cool spaceship game where you can play as a dock worker" 😂
Personally I'd love that event, but it isn't how you market a game to the general audience.
@thumpertron you might be right, it would be a hard sell. But according to the poll, not everyone wants to take part in combat, and there might be many that feel that way outside of the player base too. It doesn't mean that this would be a permanent thing, could just be a small event. But yeah, would be a hard sell.
@@youknowmenr2you must be one boring person if you think thats fun.
I agree, great points. Having all the promises gameplay loop have more robust gameplay mechanics would make Star Citizen feel like a more vast a complete universe/sand box. Vs how it feels at times with all this space and not many activities. I’m a combat focused citizen but the idea of having all the gameplay loops available fills me with hope that SC can reach for the starts they aim for.
The beginning of this video would be a good trailer to trick some of my friends into playing the game🤔
Completely agree. They need to fix this perspective
Very good point, I think the Argo Raft was the first ship that came without any weapons mounts(MPUV I know, I mean real ship) also looking more for non-combat gameplay.
This is why I play other games more than SC since I'm a non-PVP player.
Me 2
The conversation that always got me was around (almost) every ship having guns. Some of these ships such a small amount of firepower - the C8R springs to mind - that you might as well have not bothered. You are not going to start or finish the fight with those guns, you are not going to dissuade anyone either. The only use for those guns is shooting at ground targets.
For 3.18 you should have just shown a loading screen.
I always disliked the event but never could put my finger on it.
Perfectly explained! It's the lack of utilisation of other game mechanics compared to pewpew and explosions. Star Citizen is an MMO as they said, not a space battle sim
If only the combat was good.
You're right. It's not. Ship on ship is nowhere near ED level.
I remember thinking Distribution centers would be cool hubs for exchanging cargo between freighters and smaller ships for planetside delivery. Maybe even pick up a few cargo missions while there.
Nope, just arenas for PVP combat.
I used to do a lot of cargo running pre 3.16. Its just been more focused on combat nowadays. I wish there was other space games that look this good and are single player. Sadly, there isn't any space game out there with this level of detail and ship interiors.
They should look at the WoW event from 2005_2006. Opening the gates of ahn qiraj. An event that required raw material turn ins and finished goods.
Combat is easy. Exploration is hard. That's why they focus on the easy dollars while selling the dream of exploration. It's a travesty.
I just like a bit of space trucking with my Raft or Hercules... My biggest wish is a couple of in-ship radio stations that can be linked to playlists on streaming services or something like the GTA Radio...
Simple, combat is low effort and they don't have a clue how to get anything else working. I stopped playing 3 years ago and they've only added 2 things to careers since then, salvage and manually loading cargo. To say this game is stagnant is an understatement.
I could not agree more, combat is good. But this game has been sold on so many other things than just combat. Thank you for shining a light on this! ❤
At this point, I think most would agree starts. Eads doesn’t have a combat problem. It has an exploration problem.
There's a wealth of possibilities when it comes to cargo based gameplay. A planetary event that necessitates a huge quantity of food, or medical supplies. An explosion at a station that requires a bunch of metals to rebuild. Locking expansion of certain systems behind enough deliveries of supplies - like allowing the Pyro jump gate to finally get built with contributions from the players, like the XT mission's supply runs. There are tons of possibilities, and none of them have to be built around the assumption of combat - even though pirates and PVP absolutely should be allowed as part of them. CIG seems to think the non-combat part of the game should be all busywork, rather than compelling, fun gameplay.
Well done SpaceTomato, you finally made a video that I could watch from start to finish.
I joined the ranks of SC backers in mid-2016 and by that Christmas I was Concierge and Evocati. But, my wallet has been firmly closed for the last three years because I've lost faith that CIG will deliver a game in which combat is "an ever present possibility" whilst "you can be whatever you want to be". For the last five years minimum, it has been all about the combat - even during Chris Roberts self-proclaimed "year of non-combat activities" (2023 ... as announced at CitizenCon 2022).
Note that I said I lost faith in what they WILL deliver, not in what they CAN deliver. To deliver what they promised for the last 12 years, it needs top management to take the bull by the cojones and steer it back on course for the original vision. I'm not convinced they're even thinking about that, let alone trying it.
I cant remember where they said it but it was either a recent ISC or SCL that they said combat is going to be apart of every profession. You can do whatever you want but combat is always going to be a possibility. When every profession will most likely deal with combat at one point or another it's extremely important you get it right such as things like inventory and medical being apart of everything. It's the backbone of the entire game and they are showing this in recent years. Yes, hauling is still important. Cargo is still important. Mining is still important. Combat is just apart of ALL of that. Especially with base building that seems to be the end goal that will even have raiding which will give an even bigger reason to do combat(planetary control).
Casual Artosis memes out of nowhere. I love it.
It is interesting to see how people see potential, and just how much potential they see, in something that the devs can barely get to do the things they try to make it do.
Somehow all the flash, empty detail (e.g. the LOD of FPS weapons), and overall visual fidelity of the game (and ESPECIALLY the promo clips) combine to give the impression that there is a lot of there there.
When the reality is nothing could be further from the truth. All of those things that people envision largely involve interactions and game mechanics that are not present in the game.
And given just how much CIG struggles to give the things they want to give, what prospect are there that those other - outside - visions are ever going to get implemented?
Frankly RN I am enjoying Star Citizen less for the actual game play and more as a study in human behaviors.
All development was prioritized to SQ42 so all features we had were from that, the vast majority of the space opera is combat in smaller ships and walking around a larger one, interacting with NPC's. So what'd we get? Walking, shooting and some talking.
Hopefully now that's changing, but we'll see.
I can understand why they have focused on mixed or combat centric events in the past, because the other gameplay loops were so painful under developed. But I agree, it's time to change that.
I like your idea of a server wide mission to stockpile resources at one location. If they give increased rewards for destroying hostile ships during the event it will incentivize the combat community to protect cargo ships. Pirates already have a lot to gain from disabling and stealing the cargo.