Scam Atlas
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If you thought Star Citizen wasn't scammy enough, they at least got a game released. So let me present the next level of space sims: Star Atlas.
StarAtlas.com | Home
A grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, political domination, and living among the stars.
WARNING: The site is so heavy on the browser I think it running an actual cryptominer underneath would have been less of a load than the fancy shit they have. So I'll post some highlights instead.
First, let us change this high concept by removing features that doesn't exist:
A
grandstrategygameofspace exploration,territorial conquest,political domination, and more.So let us dive into this!
The future of reality
A world vast beyond imaginingInbetween the generic space sim marketing bullshit we find the three factions of aliens, cyborgs and humans. Real innovative there, guys...
Next up we are informed that the game will have
Exploration!
Mining!
Trading!Wow, never played any space sim with those elements before! Innovation overload!
And after that, let's look at the ships themselves. I'm just gonna post this description of the crew quarters:
The Crew Quarters
Catch a breath in the relaxing ambiance of the crew quarters. With your favorite ReBirth meta-poster on the wall, the space comes alive with colors and an electronic beat breathed into it.And then after some more meaningless marketing we can visit the showroom (full of concept art) or "Play" the game. As the button is labelled play you may think this will lead to some sort of downloadable clinet? Nope! It leads right into the MARKETPLACE! The one feature they have that's up and running. Because clearly that's the most important thing in a GAME.
And yeah, if you hadn't guessed it already, it's all cryptocurrency NFT-powered of course. But they have a leaderboard keeping track of the most vital of stats:
How much shitcoins have been poured into each faction of course. And the top player is also based off who has poured the most shitcoins into it. You may wonder why the player name is a wallet address? Well, that's because usernames haven't been added yet. It's coming. And in the shittiest way possible.
Anothing thing about the list of features, current and upcoming, is that an actual standalone game client is only mentioned in passing. It's just generic bullshit, and an actual game as you would expect from the description, gets an aside.
So, there you have it. If you are not ready to fully immerse yourself in the metaverse now I don't know what will make you to be honset.
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Holy fuck, that username system is so fucking horrible I suspect some inter-cranial penile exercises happening to the perpetrator.
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@Atazhaia said in Scam Atlas:
If you thought Star Citizen wasn't scammy enough, they at least got a game released.
TBF, Star Citizen (or rather: the developer) isn't so much "scammy" as "incompetent".
Granted, if you'd decided to go a-whalin', you can hop on over to the Fool-and-his-not-really-money thread to dwell on your life choices.
Me, I spent something like 30 bucks and got my money's worth so far. I pop in every now and again to see what's new, but don't really care that much.
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@GOG I've always gotten the impression they weren't even "incompetent", more of "entirely incapable of making a finished game product, while spending immense amounts of time on what amounts to a technical demo"
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The Marketplace
Buy and sell your resources and services on the Star Atlas marketplace, both in and outside the game.Eh? "Outside the game"?
Also, fucking hell, I checked their marketplace and the cheapest ship I could find would cost you the equivalent of $800 USD (assuming I got their conversion rate right) and several that were in the five figures range.
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@cvi said in Scam Atlas:
Eh? "Outside the game"?
Seems their primary focus is to make all the "outside the game" features (aka the marketplace and the browser client) work before the game itself. So you can buy your .jpg for $800 and admire it in your browser until
the game is finishedthey take the money and run off.
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@sloosecannon said in Scam Atlas:
@GOG I've always gotten the impression they weren't even "incompetent", more of "entirely incapable of making a finished game product, while spending immense amounts of time on what amounts to a technical demo"
It's not quite as bad as that.
The problem, at the end of the day, is Chris Roberts. The man's got a Vision, but - sadly - not the discernment and focus to see it through. Just as an example: remember when CP2077 was supposed to have a transit system players could ride on? Soon as that was announced, nothing would do but for Star Citizen to also have a transit system players can ride on. Today, CP2077 doesn't have a transit system (feature was cut to focus resources elsewhere), while Star Citizen does. Multiple different ones, 'coz why not.
It's the same with everything: CR has a million ideas per hour and whole teams get sidetracked into implementing those, instead of focusing on core gameplay. Recently, survival games became a big thing, so of course SC has to have nutrition and hydration.
The core gameplay itself is continually being re-done, with stuff like the basic flying/shooting on its umpteenth iteration. Arena Commander (the arena battle module intended to test this stuff) launched in 2014. You'd think seven years would be enough to lock down the main mechanic in the game.
Having said all that: I don't think calling SC a "technical demo" is really fair. It is a playable game at this point. If you liked the human-sized, space-trucker experience of Privateer, and don't mind having to play with other people, you can absolutely have a good time with it (modulo bugs). I know I did.
Just don't, y'know, pay any additional money for digital spaceships, lest you wind up in this thread.
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@GOG said in Scam Atlas:
Just as an example: remember when CP2077 was supposed to have a transit system players could ride on?
Don't even remind me. There are so many things that game was "supposed to have" it's not even funny. How could I be so naive as to believe their bullshit about unrestricted clothing combinations? It sounds near impossible, I should've known they're lying!
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@GOG like most Visionaries, CR is best when he has people to moderate him and keep him focused on delivering something - e.g. the rest of the folks at Origin.
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@Gąska said in Scam Atlas:
@GOG said in Scam Atlas:
Just as an example: remember when CP2077 was supposed to have a transit system players could ride on?
Don't even remind me. There are so many things that game was "supposed to have" it's not even funny. How could I be so naive as to believe their bullshit about unrestricted clothing combinations? It sounds near impossible, I should've known they're lying!
The clothing system is kinda sorta there, and definitely not entirely bad(1), but the transit system was disappointing. I missed the during-development hype about that, and it's clear where in Night City the entrances to the transit system were supposed to be, but they don't let you in to go see the platforms where the trains never arrive.
While it's fun to steal trucks and use them to flatten all comers (except other trucks and the Basilisk), I was very disappointed at being unable to steal the buses I came across.
(1) There's a few things missing from the upper tiers of clothing armour values, but that I wanted to be able to use, but in general it's OK.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Scam Atlas:
@Gąska said in Scam Atlas:
@GOG said in Scam Atlas:
Just as an example: remember when CP2077 was supposed to have a transit system players could ride on?
Don't even remind me. There are so many things that game was "supposed to have" it's not even funny. How could I be so naive as to believe their bullshit about unrestricted clothing combinations? It sounds near impossible, I should've known they're lying!
The clothing system is kinda sorta there
It's not. At least not the one they advertised. I don't mean it works differently than advertised; it's not at all like what they advertised. They promised a system without equipment slots. And what do we get? Five rigid equipment slots. It's an important distinction because the backing tech for either approach has to be completely different. They clearly couldn't make it work so scrapped the entire thing.
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@Gąska said in Scam Atlas:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Scam Atlas:
@Gąska said in Scam Atlas:
@GOG said in Scam Atlas:
Just as an example: remember when CP2077 was supposed to have a transit system players could ride on?
Don't even remind me. There are so many things that game was "supposed to have" it's not even funny. How could I be so naive as to believe their bullshit about unrestricted clothing combinations? It sounds near impossible, I should've known they're lying!
The clothing system is kinda sorta there
It's not. At least not the one they advertised. I don't mean it works differently than advertised; it's not at all like what they advertised. They promised a system without equipment slots. And what do we get? Five rigid equipment slots. It's an important distinction because the backing tech for either approach has to be completely different. They clearly couldn't make it work so scrapped the entire thing.
Huh, yeah, missed that, too. No-equipment-slots wasn't ever going to work, so I can't imagine why they thought it could. Even in The Secret World, where clothing is just visual - stats and bonuses are given by talismans and suchlike - they have rigid slots (EDIT: for clothing). When clothing/armour carries all your defence and attack stats, you inevitably end up with rigid slots.
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@Steve_The_Cynic it's not even about stats - it's about the technical difficulty of having arbitrary layers of clothing overlapping one another.
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@Gąska Yeah, I'm sure they could've gotten it just as balanced as it is currently with you only getting stats from attributes and perks.
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@Gąska Something I noticed when I was visiting a friend who was playing Star Citizen. He was going to reequip his armor after having flewn into an asteroid and ending up in a hospital. He was trying for several minutes and failing until he realized that to equip his armor he first needed to put on an undersuit. But no message or anything from the game pointing that out, just a nothing happening.
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@Atazhaia The Star Citizen clothing/armour system is... pretty much like everything in the game: not very intuitive.
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@Watson said in Scam Atlas:
I'm in this picture, just with knee pads (sports) instead of
shoespants.
E: Too tired to post.
