I backend in 2014, long after the kickstarter, after the Arnea Commander had been released. Didn't even have a dedicated gaming PC before. Crowdfunding had by then been established as a means to finance games. Other studios have done so successfully.
NO. To the bolded part, simply no. I'm fine with waiting till 2018 if the dev is competent I there's reasonable indication they're going to pull through with their schedule. I can live with expanded scope and adding a year or to two to the initally planned dev time. I can live with cutting features to make a release, and continuing financing the studio later by selling addons with those features.
I'm not okay, and neither should
anybody else be, with a person who tells one thing (see Roberts' 2012 quote on the last page) pulls a revisioninst
at every turn, unabashedly, reliably and continuously fails any ETA they set themselves (note the reference to Star Marine in that link) and then does not even have the
goddamn balls to come out on stage, apologize, offer a plausible reason and exlanation and a new ETA
as the bloody first thing they do when sailing through a new ETA in front of a crowd of eagerly waiting people who've paid money to be present at that presentation where Squadron 42 content was promised. The whole reason Chris is able to prance around like that is the money they collected from supporters for the given purpose on delivering a product, but he and other leading heads of Star Citizen hushed all the inconsistencies and broken ETAs up and merrily ask 750$ for another bloody .jpeg ship.
This whole attitude, the whole handling of the Star Marine fiasco (for the uninitiated: that's Star Citizens FPS Arena shooter mode), which was supposed to be released in 2015, was then delayed indefinitely, was then
weeks not months or years away, then reemerged - who'd have thought - a
year later as part of the 2.6 update to their broken ass "Alpha 2.x" tech demo, which -
who. would. have. thought. - sails passed its initial ETA.
There are few possible explanations. Either the people in charge and responsible for setting all these ETAs for themsellves are full of shit. Or they're just willfully misleading. I guess it's a combination of both at this point.
This impression is only reinforced for me, as Chris Roberts continues to prance about like he's making the absolute space game of forever, but everything they have shown that can reasonably assumed to be actually played realtime footage, was characterized by janky ass vehicle movement, janky ass character movement, sub-par shooting gameplay compared to about any other high profile FPS out there and by breaking near as often as not in terms of animation. With a 125$ Mio. project that has allegedly been five years into development, this is a downright
disgraceful showing. They're playing in the realm of the CoDs, Battlefields and GTAs, in terms of their funding, their time investment and their studio size. There is no "this is so unprecedented, it's hard to do and jankiness is expected" excuse to be made. Either they're capable of delivering what they've set out to do with their whole "Best Damn Space Sim Eever" pretense, or they not. And outside of the realm of fappable bullshots and off hands tech demos, everything they have demonstrated, from the flight model, movement, animation etc. (that hasn't gotten any noticeably less janky and broken since Arena Commander in 2014), to their handling of deadlines, breaking of promises and dancing around being honest about the reasons for continuously breaking self imposed ETAs or being forthcoming with new ETAs speaks volumes that they're not able in any form to deliver on their promises of the BDSSE.
