Debate Magazine

Star Citizen - Gamescom 2017 - Pre-3.0 Alpha Footage is Not Encouraging

Posted on the 26 August 2017 by Freeplanet @CUST0D1AN

oh dear... well, they did it, they released (at least visually demonstrated) the dying duck that is Star Citizen's pre-3.0 release.
It's full of bugs. And don't get me wrong, I've demo'd early software at E3, namely Ghostmaster from Empire Games, so I know dev's never easy. But this Gamescom demo seems loads buggier than last year's excellent demo. And it looks like there's STILL no door-based gameplay to speak of.
Planets disappear when you visit them.
Ship ramps still don't work on non-flat surfaces like planets.
Players carc i.e. die, locking out potential rescue players.
Doors still don't work... And I mentioned Star Citizen's Door Issues way back in a post from this time last year, clearly nobody at CIG or Cloud Imperium Games thinks doors are essential to such fake-sandbox gaming. My contention is 'still' that Star Citizen is ONLY a one-player game with Ai-assisted gameplay -- there's no real door-based sandbox feel to it. Not al all...
"But, what do you mean by doors, Mike," the doors work fine. Yeah, but IN A GAME OF DOORS one doesn't mean just the doors that open and close. The act of being 'in the verse', is the act of moving from door to door. Whether you're making sure a box renders in your viewport, or you're jumping a capital ship from star to star, doors is all it is.
Doors also applies to # PLAYERS ON THE SERVER, I mean, "How can you fully populate a massive inter-planetary attack ship like an Idris, if you can't have that many players in the same server?" ffs. How does a captain pass across orders using FOIP or VOIP or other direct command?
Additionally, while it's cool to see a plasma-powered jet-fighter hanging in space, it feels COMPLETELY WRONG to see the same jet fighter doing the same in atmosphere - Star Citizen promised a more flight-based dynamic in atmosphere, and I'm assuming that VTOL was your only way to land, and constant movement was the essential ingredient.
Anyway, and the lighting's broken as all hell on the new planetary tech.

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