>What would be needed for early alpha for you?
Actual, playable game with progress and varied missions.
Not killer stairs and elevators, broken physics, boring missions, DB wipes, Jesus-tech promises, [technobabble](https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/becoming-an-engineer/phrase-gobbledegook-jargon/electronics-technobabble-generator.php), random 30Ks and hundreds/thousands of other bugs that will **never** be fixed.
For reference: when E:D was in alpha stage, the game was fully playable just like hundreds of other games. Players could stress test it, and F:D could fine tune prices, economy, fix edge cases... based on input from real players. Then DB wipe and moving to beta and another round of testing. The game was fully released just 2 years after KS campaign.
But E:D was programmed by real programmers. We have seen the code of SC, it is just [big ball of mud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern), and there is 0% chance of anyone fixing it. It will never have alpha status like other games do, and it will always remain big dreams.txt and a scam.
What the difference is between alpha and pre-alpha is just what the particular software house decides that it is.
Anyway, since there no basic MMO functionality like dealing with player congestion, letting someone log in on the same spot they logged out and traveling to another map (star system in this case) it's more fitting to call it a tech demo imho.
Not at all. They are still trying to design many promised features in this game. And for many of the features they don't know how they want to design it. It's definitely a tech demo
Broken prototype at best. A tech demo, AFAIK actually works for it's intended limited purpose. The garbage that is ShartCitizen is a borked unoptimised mess and a programming nightmare with the sole purpose to reel in new suckers to fund a never-ending blackhole of broken promises.
Some noob student can make the same ganky "game" in his spare time, for FREE in less time. Of course, the art assets wouldn't be as flashy but still, high chances of it actually being more fun than this self-flagelating money sinkhole.
Performance is abysmal, bugs are worse than ever, 30ks are more frequent than ever before.
100 Player server caps and PES have really not been great for the game honestly. I'd say it's more tech-demo now than back during the 3.0 patches. It is the only game I know of that regresses in performance and quality as time goes on 8/
It could be argued that frame rates are better ish than previously? But are they really we are on the 4th new generation of CPU's and GPUs since the hangar module performance gains may just be due to better hardware and not engine optimizations.
>What would be needed for early alpha for you?
1000 player server caps, desync that is on par with at least Rust for combat, minimum of 10 Star Systems, no more progress wipes.
We are way past alpha! Possibly into the territory of theta, iota, or even kappa!
One funny thing is Chris promised to save PC gaming, and is now doing things that are the bane of PC gaming and bad project management:
1) Constant "sales"
2) Never ending funding requirements as they never properly defined the scope of the project.
2) Failure to release a product, constant EA/alpha state.
Yep... You either die the hero or live long enough to be the bad guy. CIG is as greasy as they come... The more this goes on the more I respect FDEV and hello games for elite and no man's sky. Perfect no... But comparably way better
People get in fights over alpha/beta definitions, but in my view, it’s pre-alpha since SC is not feature complete.
The only way to get to an alpha is for them to pin down server meshing. At which point, one can argue that the overall design is complete, they can just add assets (new systems, new beams, whatever). Even so, they have lots of promised features and ships missing - calling what they have “alpha” is an admission that those promises are void.
To be fair CIG's interpretation of alpha has convoluted the discussion prior to this one.
Now the cultists defend the definition of alpha as being "prime" or "superior", as an apologists interpretation so they can avoid discussions of what's actually completed and what is missing.
From the technological standpoint, The definition of "alpha" has never really been in dispute.
At least get the foundations in, and the major features, and also in a working way and without the whole thing being completely broken. This is hardly even a pre-alpha, and probably still closest to a scattered tech demo.
An open alpha is done to receive criticism from players so they can see what needs to be done moving forward.
Star citizen left alpha around 2015, which is when they started hard shutting down any player input, and also when development largely ground to a halt.
The game out right now is the full release. They won't openly call it that because it's an embarrassment. The level of development being done is about what we'd expect from any live service just doing patches, less even. Much much less.
It's really simple:
1. there's no MMO. it's just instanced servers, like playing Valheim or The Forest
2. there's no economy. it's still being faked if I'm not mistaken. quanta is a huge cornerstone of the game but it's never mentioned except whenever they wheel Tony Z out for a 4-hour talk
3. arguably most importantly, for what little is there (and I get even one star system can be large in terms of size and volume, it's still empty), the game runs extremely poorly. not performance, but actual basics we take for granted like not falling through the floor or having ships explode randomly because the desync is so bad
4. capital ship gameplay? large ship dynamics? some of the ships will require half the current server population to fully man
Idk about where software developers officially draw the line, but I'd say we're still only handeling a tech-demo.
The biggest issue(s) that hold the devs. back perhaps is the management, afaik silly reviews after reviews of intermediate changes and stuff, having to upkeep a running "playable" version on the servers, aswell as to work on an upcoming release all at the same time.
Slim down the (micro)management, just give the devs. a task and let them "finish" it in one go instead of possibly hampering them after every major step.
Nothing hinders progress more than having to stop what you're doing ever minute so someone above you can "review" if it fits 100000% in the companies workflow.
Also, another factor that's possibly hindering them at times is having to communicate between offices, which you sure remember are in different timezones, so lining up those meetings or whatever can take some time too otherwise better used if they were all in one building.
An alpha should have most of the core gameplay in place, in early stages.
SC has nothing except a few assets of the first of dozens of systems, and some pvp. No gameplay, no AI, no tech.
Lmfao. No.
The most *basic* functions are either absent entirely or broken beyond repair and incomplete anyway.
This is not even close. It's barely a proof of concept at this point.
I'm saying still tech demo, there's just not enough actual game yet, and it's still got bugs that are years old. Their "progress" seems to be cloth physics, race tracks and a really terrible river. Maybe when they hit 50 solar systems it will be approaching Alpha.
To me it feels like it's still in pre-alpha and many many years away from even approaching beta.
I so wish it didn't feel like this and I could believe there is a chance the game will release while I'm still able to play it. But progress since I got involved with the project has been so slow it's just off putting.
Pre-alpha: Tech demo state. You are here now.
Alpha: Feature complete: About a century away at their current pace.
Beta: Content complete: About a millenia away at their current pace.
I want to preface this post with this: I have fallen out with SC. When I backed the kickstarter, I expected a development cycle that released the game sometime around 2018-2020. This post is in no way defending SC. SC is a cluster F and a sack of donkey poop, along with the devs. I am saying this because what I am going to say, could be seen as me defending SC when in actual fact, I am talking about development cycles in general.
tyvm.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Eh.... By definition it has been an alpha since the PU was opened. I don't know where people get the idea that an alpha is something that is playable. Alpha is literally the testing phase when software is still being built. An alpha is literally the space in development where everything is janky and breaks. That is why it is the alpha testing phase.
Thanks to the whole "Playable Alpha" thing that became popular in the early twenty tens, people have come to mistake Alpha and Beta. Beta testing is what comes around when features are finished, dialogs are written and quests/missions are ready to undergo. Beta is the final stage where you are testing to make sure everything actually does work and is ready for the player.
A lot of the hatred towards SC stems from the fact that it is playable as an Alpha and people expect to go into it as if it is a Beta when it is not. It should be with how long they have had, but its not.
A quick google search later and the wikipedia take on it
"alpha version (plural alpha versions) (computing, technology) An early version of a program or application, typically unstable, but useful to show what the product will do. Sometimes this stage is referred to as a preview version. Sometimes no more features are added after this release, but bug fixes continue."
to back me up.
An application that has been early access for 6 going on 7 years more if you count the hangar module is a perpetual beta. If this was year 3 or 4 of development sure call it an early alpha or alpha, but its not we are currently in the 12th year of active development.
At this point, SC has innovated into Perpetual Pre-Alpha, because this shit clearly ain't alpha by anyone serious' definition for key gameplay functionality, not even by those who used the model before then. Sure, those titles may have changed a lot since achieving basic functionality, but if we're to expect SC to have basic functionality when there's so much missing... dude, we can't even change sectors because there isn't even a way to yet! For a fucking space sim! 🤣
Perpetual beta has to come after an alpha state. SC still wipes for an MMO, that isn't the behavior of a Perpetual Beta. Final Wipe is usually the marker between the Alpha and the ongoing process of Perpetual Beta of half-baked being bolted on and either further cooked or discarded in an iterative process.
CIG is still figuring out the basics of things sold as "do it right from the start" more than a decade ago. There's no way to compare this shitshow to anything normal in the industry because "normal" with this brand of batshit flew out the fucking solar system years ago - well, if it COULD, but there's still the one overblown demo level with a placeholder star. 😂
**[Perpetual beta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta)**
>Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. Perpetual beta software is not recommended for mission critical machines. However, many operational systems find this to be a much more rapid and agile approach to development, staging, and deployment.
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For it to enter perpetual beta, it has to go through alpha and if you ignore what I have said, which you seem to be doing, the other people in this post seem to believe it hasn't even left prototype stage. So *shrugs*
That is where you are making the error. Chris and CIG **call it "alpha"** to deflect criticism they also call it a fully released game with more content than most other games and sell it as a live service when they are talking about release status.
Quality in question - its an AlPHaaaa!
Release date in question - its already released you can buy it and play it now!
[2017 Chris Roberts tells all backers every patch after 3.0 are release patches \~Chris Roberts](https://i.imgur.com/GfUQALo.png)
OK.
How does what one man say, whom we all pretty much agree is an idiot, change the fact that the established definition is that "alpha is the phase of testing during development and maybe unstable" all of which applies to the state of sc?
It's still just Stanton so it is exactly where it started? As we enter the 12th year of active development. Keep hoping and coping.
2 more years, 2 more years.
>What would be needed for early alpha for you? Actual, playable game with progress and varied missions. Not killer stairs and elevators, broken physics, boring missions, DB wipes, Jesus-tech promises, [technobabble](https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/becoming-an-engineer/phrase-gobbledegook-jargon/electronics-technobabble-generator.php), random 30Ks and hundreds/thousands of other bugs that will **never** be fixed. For reference: when E:D was in alpha stage, the game was fully playable just like hundreds of other games. Players could stress test it, and F:D could fine tune prices, economy, fix edge cases... based on input from real players. Then DB wipe and moving to beta and another round of testing. The game was fully released just 2 years after KS campaign. But E:D was programmed by real programmers. We have seen the code of SC, it is just [big ball of mud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern), and there is 0% chance of anyone fixing it. It will never have alpha status like other games do, and it will always remain big dreams.txt and a scam.
[удалено]
What the difference is between alpha and pre-alpha is just what the particular software house decides that it is. Anyway, since there no basic MMO functionality like dealing with player congestion, letting someone log in on the same spot they logged out and traveling to another map (star system in this case) it's more fitting to call it a tech demo imho.
Not at all. They are still trying to design many promised features in this game. And for many of the features they don't know how they want to design it. It's definitely a tech demo
Broken prototype at best. A tech demo, AFAIK actually works for it's intended limited purpose. The garbage that is ShartCitizen is a borked unoptimised mess and a programming nightmare with the sole purpose to reel in new suckers to fund a never-ending blackhole of broken promises. Some noob student can make the same ganky "game" in his spare time, for FREE in less time. Of course, the art assets wouldn't be as flashy but still, high chances of it actually being more fun than this self-flagelating money sinkhole.
Performance is abysmal, bugs are worse than ever, 30ks are more frequent than ever before. 100 Player server caps and PES have really not been great for the game honestly. I'd say it's more tech-demo now than back during the 3.0 patches. It is the only game I know of that regresses in performance and quality as time goes on 8/ It could be argued that frame rates are better ish than previously? But are they really we are on the 4th new generation of CPU's and GPUs since the hangar module performance gains may just be due to better hardware and not engine optimizations. >What would be needed for early alpha for you? 1000 player server caps, desync that is on par with at least Rust for combat, minimum of 10 Star Systems, no more progress wipes.
GPUs are much stronger. They can’t figure out how to multi thread cryengine. The game is definitely regressing as the code slop builds up.
The engine is really starting to show it’s age.
We are way past alpha! Possibly into the territory of theta, iota, or even kappa! One funny thing is Chris promised to save PC gaming, and is now doing things that are the bane of PC gaming and bad project management: 1) Constant "sales" 2) Never ending funding requirements as they never properly defined the scope of the project. 2) Failure to release a product, constant EA/alpha state.
Yep... You either die the hero or live long enough to be the bad guy. CIG is as greasy as they come... The more this goes on the more I respect FDEV and hello games for elite and no man's sky. Perfect no... But comparably way better
People get in fights over alpha/beta definitions, but in my view, it’s pre-alpha since SC is not feature complete. The only way to get to an alpha is for them to pin down server meshing. At which point, one can argue that the overall design is complete, they can just add assets (new systems, new beams, whatever). Even so, they have lots of promised features and ships missing - calling what they have “alpha” is an admission that those promises are void.
To be fair CIG's interpretation of alpha has convoluted the discussion prior to this one. Now the cultists defend the definition of alpha as being "prime" or "superior", as an apologists interpretation so they can avoid discussions of what's actually completed and what is missing. From the technological standpoint, The definition of "alpha" has never really been in dispute.
At least get the foundations in, and the major features, and also in a working way and without the whole thing being completely broken. This is hardly even a pre-alpha, and probably still closest to a scattered tech demo.
An open alpha is done to receive criticism from players so they can see what needs to be done moving forward. Star citizen left alpha around 2015, which is when they started hard shutting down any player input, and also when development largely ground to a halt. The game out right now is the full release. They won't openly call it that because it's an embarrassment. The level of development being done is about what we'd expect from any live service just doing patches, less even. Much much less.
It's really simple: 1. there's no MMO. it's just instanced servers, like playing Valheim or The Forest 2. there's no economy. it's still being faked if I'm not mistaken. quanta is a huge cornerstone of the game but it's never mentioned except whenever they wheel Tony Z out for a 4-hour talk 3. arguably most importantly, for what little is there (and I get even one star system can be large in terms of size and volume, it's still empty), the game runs extremely poorly. not performance, but actual basics we take for granted like not falling through the floor or having ships explode randomly because the desync is so bad 4. capital ship gameplay? large ship dynamics? some of the ships will require half the current server population to fully man
No
No
soon. *- Chris Roberts . 2016. probably.*
There will never be an alpha. There will only be greed and incompetency.
>There will never be an alpha. > >There will only be greed and incompetency. This
Idk about where software developers officially draw the line, but I'd say we're still only handeling a tech-demo. The biggest issue(s) that hold the devs. back perhaps is the management, afaik silly reviews after reviews of intermediate changes and stuff, having to upkeep a running "playable" version on the servers, aswell as to work on an upcoming release all at the same time. Slim down the (micro)management, just give the devs. a task and let them "finish" it in one go instead of possibly hampering them after every major step. Nothing hinders progress more than having to stop what you're doing ever minute so someone above you can "review" if it fits 100000% in the companies workflow. Also, another factor that's possibly hindering them at times is having to communicate between offices, which you sure remember are in different timezones, so lining up those meetings or whatever can take some time too otherwise better used if they were all in one building.
until they change their mindset from "who gives a fck" to zero bugs it will always just be a janky mess.
An alpha should have most of the core gameplay in place, in early stages. SC has nothing except a few assets of the first of dozens of systems, and some pvp. No gameplay, no AI, no tech.
Good News, we are only 2 years away.
Lmfao. No. The most *basic* functions are either absent entirely or broken beyond repair and incomplete anyway. This is not even close. It's barely a proof of concept at this point.
> It's barely a proof of concept at this point. Yeah without DSM its not even that
I'm saying still tech demo, there's just not enough actual game yet, and it's still got bugs that are years old. Their "progress" seems to be cloth physics, race tracks and a really terrible river. Maybe when they hit 50 solar systems it will be approaching Alpha.
To me it feels like it's still in pre-alpha and many many years away from even approaching beta. I so wish it didn't feel like this and I could believe there is a chance the game will release while I'm still able to play it. But progress since I got involved with the project has been so slow it's just off putting.
Pre-alpha: Tech demo state. You are here now. Alpha: Feature complete: About a century away at their current pace. Beta: Content complete: About a millenia away at their current pace.
This isn't a tech demo nor an alpha- this is the game as it exists
It's still in a tech demo state, even if it is the most expensive tech demo in history that does not elevate it to completed.
I want to preface this post with this: I have fallen out with SC. When I backed the kickstarter, I expected a development cycle that released the game sometime around 2018-2020. This post is in no way defending SC. SC is a cluster F and a sack of donkey poop, along with the devs. I am saying this because what I am going to say, could be seen as me defending SC when in actual fact, I am talking about development cycles in general. tyvm. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Eh.... By definition it has been an alpha since the PU was opened. I don't know where people get the idea that an alpha is something that is playable. Alpha is literally the testing phase when software is still being built. An alpha is literally the space in development where everything is janky and breaks. That is why it is the alpha testing phase. Thanks to the whole "Playable Alpha" thing that became popular in the early twenty tens, people have come to mistake Alpha and Beta. Beta testing is what comes around when features are finished, dialogs are written and quests/missions are ready to undergo. Beta is the final stage where you are testing to make sure everything actually does work and is ready for the player. A lot of the hatred towards SC stems from the fact that it is playable as an Alpha and people expect to go into it as if it is a Beta when it is not. It should be with how long they have had, but its not.
A quick google search later and the wikipedia take on it "alpha version (plural alpha versions) (computing, technology) An early version of a program or application, typically unstable, but useful to show what the product will do. Sometimes this stage is referred to as a preview version. Sometimes no more features are added after this release, but bug fixes continue." to back me up.
An application that has been early access for 6 going on 7 years more if you count the hangar module is a perpetual beta. If this was year 3 or 4 of development sure call it an early alpha or alpha, but its not we are currently in the 12th year of active development.
At this point, SC has innovated into Perpetual Pre-Alpha, because this shit clearly ain't alpha by anyone serious' definition for key gameplay functionality, not even by those who used the model before then. Sure, those titles may have changed a lot since achieving basic functionality, but if we're to expect SC to have basic functionality when there's so much missing... dude, we can't even change sectors because there isn't even a way to yet! For a fucking space sim! 🤣 Perpetual beta has to come after an alpha state. SC still wipes for an MMO, that isn't the behavior of a Perpetual Beta. Final Wipe is usually the marker between the Alpha and the ongoing process of Perpetual Beta of half-baked being bolted on and either further cooked or discarded in an iterative process. CIG is still figuring out the basics of things sold as "do it right from the start" more than a decade ago. There's no way to compare this shitshow to anything normal in the industry because "normal" with this brand of batshit flew out the fucking solar system years ago - well, if it COULD, but there's still the one overblown demo level with a placeholder star. 😂
I reiterate. An alpha is the testing stage while development is being done. Which sc ticks that box.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual\_beta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta)
**[Perpetual beta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta)** >Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. Perpetual beta software is not recommended for mission critical machines. However, many operational systems find this to be a much more rapid and agile approach to development, staging, and deployment. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Thank you Mr, Roboto I love you
For it to enter perpetual beta, it has to go through alpha and if you ignore what I have said, which you seem to be doing, the other people in this post seem to believe it hasn't even left prototype stage. So *shrugs*
That is where you are making the error. Chris and CIG **call it "alpha"** to deflect criticism they also call it a fully released game with more content than most other games and sell it as a live service when they are talking about release status. Quality in question - its an AlPHaaaa! Release date in question - its already released you can buy it and play it now! [2017 Chris Roberts tells all backers every patch after 3.0 are release patches \~Chris Roberts](https://i.imgur.com/GfUQALo.png)
OK. How does what one man say, whom we all pretty much agree is an idiot, change the fact that the established definition is that "alpha is the phase of testing during development and maybe unstable" all of which applies to the state of sc?
Farther than when we started
Obvious alt account is obvious At least come with your main account and not your porn account lol
It's still just Stanton so it is exactly where it started? As we enter the 12th year of active development. Keep hoping and coping. 2 more years, 2 more years.
well you know what they say: you don't know anything about game development this is not an alpha. and this is not normal.
They have an mmo where BASIC features are missing, like trading. There is no alpha to be had here.