Star Citizen: Next Entry into the Sci-Fi Space Sim MMO Arena

MMORPG.com featured Star Citizen in their newsletter's 'Game of the Week' column.  It seems familiar, but I can't recall if someone has posted about it here or ... my memory gets funky and fuzzy sometimes (sadly becoming more common).  

Its by Chris Roberts, the designer of Wing Commander, and its a one-time purchase, no sub with an item shop  Technically, a Buy to Play, but there are various levels of "buy", much similar to MechWarrior Online by Piranha Games.  You can read up on all the press releases if interested.

I haven't given it a lot of look over quite yet, I just wanted to get the information up.  I'm not a hardcore sci-fi game player, but I do enjoy them, especially space sims, and as a strong supporter of MMO games in general, (especially "non-AAA" startups) I want to see them do well, especially the sci-fi themed games.  There have been so many failures of sci-fi space sim MMO projects over the last decade and we really need one that can survive along side of EVE (even EVE was almost sucked into the dark void at one time).

If you dig sci-fi space sim MMOGs, give it a look over, see what you think and share with your friends.

I caught it on Kickstarter several months ago. One of my favorite games growing up was Freespace, so I jumped all over this! I can't wait to play. They raised over $11 million through crowdfunding alone! You can still go there and pre-purchase all of it at https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ . Kickstarter says an ETA of Nov 2014.

The game looks spiffy.  They hired the guy who designs the ships for the new Star Trek movies to design their ships.  It sounds like a great cross in a permanent world between the Wing Commander and Privateer series.  I helped fund it ages ago. :)

heh thought I remembered seeing it posted on the Family forums somewhere.  The ships are just OMGAWESOME, I really loved the gameplay footage from that video.

If the gameplay is as awesome as the engine, then we might finally have a MMO Space Sim that will stick around a while.  I had hopes for Jumpgate: Evolution and Black Prophecy, but they both fell flat.  I think BP got a reboot, but its all but fallen totally off of my radar, I have no idea if its still a project or not.  Jumpgate: Evolution was the one that was most promising to me, so I was very disappointed to see it canceled.  :(

Even if one winds up barely or not at all playing the MMO portion, they are creating a single player game that looks like it will definitely be fun as a standalone story intro to the MMO.  Helping fund them gets you both the MMO and the single player game.

They have all sorts of crazy way to buy into helping fund them with buying unique fundraiser only ships and bells and whistles.  I had been following them for ages and they finally had a price point funding promo that got me some stuff that seemed worthwhile and was at a level I was willing to commit to.  So it came with a few ships and permanent insurance for one of the ships.  They have a thing where if you lose your ship it is gone, unless it is insured, then you get it replaced for free - but insurance costs in game currency and the more you keep losing ships in a space of time the longer it takes for the insurance to "process" your claim.  So some neat looking ship that is an early adopter only ship came with permanent insurance so I will have that ship forever as a main or a backup or whatever without fear of losing it if it goes kablooey and without having to spend currency to insure it.

Well I have been following Star Citizen development closely from kickstarter campaign and this definately looks good. I have always loved space games. Tie Fighter, Xwing, Freespace etc... I have also tried EVE online, but that didn't sit me well. There is something when you get really fly the ship and blast your opponent away or make attack swoops towards capital ships.

I really hope Gaiscioch will add Star Citizen as a chapter to their repertoire.

Well color me impressed. I am very interested in this. However I am currently in the middle of starting a second business so my gaming time has been reduced to about maybe an hour a day LOL. Hoping that goes up as the business gets on it's feet.  I'm curious though. Have you seen any thing about ground missions?  

Well if I have understood right, there will be ground missions. What kind of ground missions there will be, that I don't know. Hopefully there will be large variety of missions. Right now everybody is waiting for dog fighting module to be completed so we can start shooting each other to pieces :).

Gaiscioh only supports fantasy games as official chapters.  However, if enough of us are interested in playing, they do support a kind of non-chapter organization that I don't feel like looking up the name for right now so we would all have a place to communicate and organize and stuff together.  I am not sure of the exact requirements, but we would need some amount of people.  Post here if you are definitely playing this game and maybe we will have enough interest to get that unsupported chapter thing (it means we don't earn rank progress, have an elder assigned to us, etc.).

Ok, I stopped being lazy immediately after post the previous post and looked it up.  If we have at least 10 people who truly are going to be actively playing this game then we could open a Saighdear branch.  Information is located here: http://www.gaiscioch.com/saighdear/ .  Basically it would get us a forum, raidcall support, a branch overview page, a news feed, and a membership roster.  So, basically, nice resources to keep ourselves organized and in communication without having to seek those outside of Gaiscioch.

I wanted to see the request for a Saighdear expansion form out of curiosity.  I am two ranks higher than the required minimum rank to request one (it requires a veteran rank and I am officer rank).  However, when I click on the form it tells me "You do not yet meet the qualifications to open a Saighdear branch."

Edit: I asked on the help desk forum.  Silly me, my warlord rank is not high enough.  The rest still stands though.  Star Citizen is still a way from launch, so post here if you are interested and we will see if we have enough folks to have a Saighdear branch.

Well I'm definately going to play Star Citizen. I have been waiting such game for long time. I also will be having own corporation, but Star Citizen will support multiple organization memberships so that won't be problem.

I will be looking into this game, as well as a couple other crowd funded games.

This looks very interesting to me. I will definitely be following it.

I've been combing the forums and the net. From what I've gathered they are saying the Squad 42 part of the game (single player/ co-op up to six players.) will be 70% in your ship and 30% fps. The 30% fps part is going to be missions where you land and have to steal a ship or some other type mission. Hmmm steal a ship? LOL Grand theft auto... er I mean ship comes to mind ?  Honestly can you imagine if Rockstar ( makers of GTA) and RSI got together on this for the ground base part of this game? Yeah I know it would take many more years to make the game but wow what a game it would be.

 I am still interested in this game and yes I am going to buy into it and thus play it when it comes out.  However if any one hears of a game that's more of a FPS space marines type mmo I would love to hear about it. I don't really like the PvP FPS games so much. I just don't have the reaction time for fps pvp games. More of a co-op fps verses npc environment type mmo.  I have been playing Star Trek Online as of late and much to my own surprise I've really enjoyed it. But I'm running into the same problem I did with Defiance Online. I've completed most of the game. So looking for a new sci-fi mmo.

@Oldmanjenkinz,

I think it would awesome to combine Star Citizen and GTA :) Anyway it will possible to steal ship by winning boarding combat with another player. How they make mechanics for it, that I don't know. So I would think mechanics for stealing ship in Squadron 42 is similar than in persistent universe.

What comes to sci-fi MMO, well there aren't quite many of those. I think Warhammer 40k - Eternal Crusade will be the next interesting project http://www.eternalcrusade.com

There is also Firefall which is kind of sci-fi game and it is team-based shooter. I think it is in open beta right now.

@RustedCrown,

Yeah I have also other kickstarter games on my list. Latest being Kingdom Come - Deliverance. That project seems to be interesting. I hope team is able to make the game.

I keep reading about this game and I must say that I am impressed. This game has already collected a little over 40mil from crowd funding and hasn't even gone into alpha yet.Star Citizen- Stretch goals. My only concern is what is keeping the powers to be from just walking off with the pledged money?  What keeps them in check?  Do they have to truthful report how much pledged money they receive or don't receive?  Has there ever been a successful kickstart program launch to date?  Hopefully someone from the family can shed some light on kickstart programs like this so that I can get a better understanding of them.

Of course there isn't any guarantees that CIG won't walk with the money, but you should think what kind of impact there would be on people careers who has been in the project. Even though they don't necessary didn't make decision to walk out, it will still affect to careers. Also Kickstarter rules and regulations states that every successful campaign needs to deliver what they have promised in campaing or they can face lawsuits and will have to pay back the money. So at least they have to make some lousy game. I have firm believe that Star Citizen will be at least good game. Will it be great game or best damn space simulation ever, that I don't know. I hope it will be BDSSE. And you can always pledge 30 dollars. With that amount you will get starter ship and whole game.

What comes to games, there has been successful campaigns and quality releases. However there hasn't been any big names yet, but for example Elite Dangerous is looking very great and it in alpha stage. Also Planetary Annihilation is starting to look very nice, Grim Dawn also.

Anyway you can always wait patiently and buy the game when it released and if it is not  then you can laugh to all who has pledged the game :) like me :)

Thank you for your response Villaovi. The more I keep reading about the game the more I like, so I pledge a little bit of money to give it a try. Thanks again.

I have been following this for a while. A friend is a huge Chris Roberts/WC fan and has talked with him online before. he's donated to much to the kickstarter he will basically be playing this for life upon release.

That is pretty cool that your friend got to talk to Chris Roberts online. Also with each article that I read I am becoming more and more of a fan. 

The concerns about the project turning to vaporware are legitimate concerns and were ones that I myself raised in my mind prior to donating.

What made me decide to invest some money into the game were the following lines of reasoning:

1) Chris Roberts has a solid track record in delivering products - and in particular, quality products - throughout his professional carreer.  He has a good reputation that I do not think he is willing to squander by doing a "take the money and run".  I also think, based on his track record that he will produce a product. Wether or not it lives up to its promises remains to be seen (but that is always the case with any product, and is a particular concern with MMOs who never deliver on all of their promises).  I believe he will deliver a product that is not a slapped together contractual obligation product "because he had to give the investors 'something'" and is of some degree of playability that would have been worth my "prepurchase" investment.  The man is driven by a passion to create a product that he has been dreaming of most of his life and this is his chance.  I think he is going to do his best to deliver on that dream and I think he is the kind of man to honor his commitments.

2) The entire team is made up of seasoned, well respected, and reputable developers/employees from related industries (and yes, I checked out of sheer curiosity - I even realized I casually know some of these people over the years through mutual friends in the industries).  I believe that this team will deliver a product of higher quality than a contractual obligation thrown bone.  As a fun aside, the person who is designing the spaceships is a well regarded hollywood studios designer who is most recently well known for designing the ships for the Star Trek reboot movies.

3) As has been previously noted, Kickstarter has very clear contractual obligations on delivery.  Even without that, there is a contract to deliver in their independent funding source.  Were they not to deliver any product whatsoever, there are multiple avenues, contracts, and breaches of promises to utilize to get your money back.  Kickstarter in particular will have an easier and established way to initiate legal reprisals for a return on investment.  In a nutshell, the avenues for a refund are established and clear cut, making for a reduced risk should Roberts attempt a "take the money and run" move.

4) The promise of the single player game was a great incentive for me.  I decided that even if the MMO winds up not to my liking, I was happy enough to invest the equivalent of a retail price very far in advance pre-purchase for funding the developers of similar games that I enjoyed so many years ago in the chance that at least the single player game would be fun.  If I wind up not being pleased - well, I have wasted more money than that on things I wound up not liking and I was willing to take a chance on this.  I think this has a greater chance of a positive outcome than some other things I took a chance on in the past that worked out well.

5)  It seems to me a nominal value for a combination of what seems like a decent chance at a fun game plus my willingness to express my appreciation by helping to keep the team employed/funding their future endeavor for what was far more pleasure for dollar value out of these people's previous works than I ever paid for their work in the past.  I made out like a bandit with the tiny amount of money I paid for their products in the past compared to the effort they put into said products.  If I thought points 1 - 4 were not valid, this would not be a consideration, but it was the one that pushed it over the edge from hestitation to giving them some cash.

They have plenty of funds to build this thing by now, so if you are concerned, just wait and see.  No pressure.  Watch and see what happens and when they get close to release, evaluate and consider.  Or wait for release - no big deal.  But, for those who do donate and thus are "locked in" to giving this thing a go at launch, please post so we can organize ourselves a bit.  If you are intrigued and think that if close to launch, if there is a viable product for you, that you would buy a copy, awesome, post here, too - I'll count ya as a probable for the purposes of a Saighdear when we get closer to launch.  I am a pretty risk adverse kind of guy, but the investment of a prepurchase price with all of the points factored above make me think that it is a nominal risk to take.  If you think otherwise, that is cool, just wait a while and re-evaluate - I won't think any less of you for it.

@Crash.  I pledged a few dollars and already joined an organization on RSI. Although if we have enough interested family members I will resign from that organization to join and play with Gaiscioch members.

@Crash: Very good points raised. In CIG there are lot of people who has worked together before and with Chris in some point so I would think they have great team and are able to make great game and not just two pieces slabbed together. To me selling point was Chris Roberts and Space Simulation. It has been too long when last good space simulation game was released. And if I have understood right they will make more single player missions after the game is released and in Kickstarter they already had stretch goal for expansion missions for the campaign so I think you should get your money's worth even though if you don't like MMO part of the game.

@RustedCrown: For now you can belong one organization, but later on you are able to join multiple organizations. That's why I will be running my own corporation, but also I will join Gaiscioch organization if there is going to be one. I just want to try doing something on my own and test if I have necessary skills to lead small group of people.