Gazing into my Crystal Ball...

Why not just cut if off and not announce release dates for stuff? Especially when our confidence in hitting particular dates is generally extremely low. Hitting dates is only one of the things we take into account when making decisions. If we focused only on hitting dates we would have finished the game already (and it would have been ****).

Also what does it actually mean to be finished anyway? Every day we come up with more ideas that we would like to explore. There is no done, it's a process.

Yeah, don't take this as personal criticism. I'm trying to explain to everyone how this works. I feel like I've explained it in the past a lot as well.

I think people look at making a game like writing a book. You make the outline and then just fill it in. It's nothing like that. It's more akin to doing a research project at the same time as engineering it into a product.

Honestly, I don't want to see release dates and the such, What I think would be better would just be to see what you guys are working on. Do something like the guys from SQUAD do, while making KSP. Every week just a little summary of what you worked on, it doesn't need to be more than a paragraph. I don't need to know when, It's just nice to know what.

Take it easy Neutrino! I think the thing here is mostly that you guys are constandly behind. The unit cannon for example, i don't know when the decision has been made to postpone it after release, but all of a sudden it just got mentioned in a forum post made by a member, instead of communicating by a forum post on itself written by you guys, because it was a pretty important decision and it also manages expectations. Now if more decisions like this have been made, we would love to hear them when you made that decision, instead of you finally clearify it in a forum post where the hostility is getting worse and worse and you guys trying to manage that! And again i might be wrong, maybe this kind of stuff cant be predicted because you build this stuff incremental and make allot of decisions on daily basis, but the point is that when a important decisions is made you can better let us know, then not say anything at all.

Nope, I was just amused that Brad has been putting out fires left and right, trying to communicate more or better or whatever, and then you're like "I've got a better idea - how about less communication!" I guess your plans really do change fast!

Myself, I'm curious as to what will be in 1.0 vs what was expected in the Kickstarter days. What is more likely to come along after 1.0? I don't think it's a crazy request given the stretch goals - how 'bout those gas giants and death stars? And let's say that something big doesn't make the cut ... could modders actually create, say, gas giant as power source on their own, or is that not a realistic expectation?

Yeah, this would be great! I love hearing about all the technical challenges you're facing, all the cool stuff that's coming up. When you guys posted about the information on multithreading and stuff, I loved that! I would LOVE to see even more of that.. Brad said he thinks he'll be doing those weekly updates and stuff again, best idea ever.

What you probably missed was when uber employees said it was postponed. It's not like forum members just started saying it was delayed. We found it somewhere and just didn't feel the need to cite our source in every conversation.

I'm a close watcher on this forum, and i might have missed that. What i remember is that it was said in a forum post of a member, the subject was about the unit cannon, and uber stated there it was postponed after release. There was never a "official post about it" as to my knowledge

Sounds good enough to me. They can't be spending time making formal responses to things when they can just as easily post on the forum.

I'm about 90-percent sure I wrote that thread. (It's been awhile, so everything's a little fuzzy.)

This is why a lot of kickstarters didn't make it. The kickstarter is easy, but a lot of them thought if they set a decent number that would fund the whole enchilada. Turns out, the game wasn't made in time, and the funding wasn't solely enough.

Really, Uber probably pulled it off the best, as far as actually managing the game they are also creating from scratch. Star Citizen, Prison Architect, Starbound, and Ouya don't take as much direct critizism. All are suprisingly successful though. Many more probably barely finished some programming on their dream project before financially running dry.

Neutrino is ultimately right. The only way to build the game, is the way they are doing it already. A lot of suggestions like balance come up. They aren't easy, but cost nothing except time, so just participate until it gets better. A lot of suggestions like unit cannons come up, those take time and funding, getting the game structurally operational is more important, no random game crashes, full game with player serverside, selling in stores and such. A lot of suggestions like n body physics come up, those take time and funding equivalent to a major rebuild of the game, a pretty steep cost for something so playably faked, and to add features just fake it more like elliptical orbits and orbital host body switching and radius 0 planets as empty space centers of orbit.

And so, *shrug* why exactly CANT a mostly functioning game developing with such great inertia and speed just continue as successfully as it has? The attitude that it can is what got it 44000 backers, got it through kickstarter, got it to where it is, despite some problems even. Really, that attitude really is the strongest factor of Star Citizen. So that attitude is the most important part, remember that.

TrophySystem, you are a genius. ATTITUDE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART. That is what I've been trying to say. Being positive brings positivity and it's own rewards. Being a constant negative nancy creates friction which makes life more difficult. Let's have more positivity and less negativity.

I'm really glad to hear that from you, honestly. There's been a lot of... negative stuff, at least on the forums, I was worried it might start getting to you guys. That's coming from me, and I'm usually pessimistic, cautiously optimistic at best. I'm glad to see you're still in high hopes

I can't imagine N-body physics being implemented again any time in the forseeable future, or any reason for it even.
You're right about that 0 radius planet thing by the way (although we can't do it yet). A barycentric system can be modeled as 2 planets orbiting a central point (your size 0 "planet) in a specific way. The math for it is actually pretty simple, which is why I think it would be doable (and cool ).

This just made me smile, trust me I can relate! I do development work for allot of very small firms so things tend to get released way too soon to try and start recouping costs, and then get refined later. In an ideal world I wouldn't work this way but it's better to get the product out than not make it at all.

Btw I do agree you really have created something that does justice to the original vision I haven't had this much fun playing a game since I first loaded up ta on my Pentium 100 machine back in the 90's.

Nope. This is plain wrong. And I do not accept it so naively.

It sounds, again, like you're blaming us, who entrust you, of not being patient and understanding. Are you saying that the success of this project is in jeopardy because we start doubting that you will not deliver what you've promised? You surely know how many people effectively bought an Early Access for PA, so you know it way better than us what you got into it.

It does worth reminding that PA has been perhaps the most costly Early Access so far, and it achieved an outstanding success on Kickstarter. You literally burned all stretched goals and earned a massive initial budget. After that it has been a best seller on Steam for two years straight.

What exactly are you complaining about, Neutrino? That is hard to deliver what you promised? That you over-promised? Or that after two years of promising *Awesome* to people, now you are realizing how hard is to keep your word?

Of course is tough. Awesome so far has been seen only in The Lego Movie.

But it wasn't the doctor to prescribe it to you guys. You did it intentionally, saying you were the right people for doing it. I don't even stress that you did it for the money, 'cos there is no shame in that. What amuses me is how some of your supporters still believe you did it exclusively for the glory, and let you go away with anything (you should reward them with something 'cos they're really precious to you). But that's an other story.

I sincerely understand that's tough, and I wish you to brilliantly success in delivering something that's close enough to what you promised. And to stay afloat after that. I really mean it (I said it so many times). But do not make us looking like the bad guys or feeling like fools, just because we do not believe to any bullock that comes from above.

Please. Please, please, pretty please. Stop blaming your Customers for being passionate about this project and for pushing you in keeping your word. Have the decency to take your responsibilities on your shoulders. And keep going. You earned an impressive customers base who did already paid you. That's huge! Even before to build an *awesome* product you built *immense* hype and expectations. You did it day after day, posting on this very Forum. It has been your marketing choice to do so. And it worked extremely well on that side.

Be proud of it, and come down to Earth. No one here says that you didn't achieve outstanding progresses since the day you started. But that's still not *awesome* and it is still not what you promised. Surely it is not a finished product, yet. So learn how to deal with criticism and complaining, because they are legitimate and they will come ten fold the closer you'll approach the release.

Be more transparent when plans change and communicative about. And less accusatory or paranoid against us.

Let's see what it's gonna happen next. As I said already, best of luck. I am really looking forward to see how high you will get with PA (even if I am in no rush to see it done), since so far you've already done an impressive work. It would be a pity to see you failing. Please don't.

Just be more humble

Nah Neutrino is not blaming us for being passionate, he never will and never shall. Like he said it's all about balance and i agree with that. And in my opinion we kept the balance in a pretty good order on this forum, i think we praised you guys just as much as we criticized you, apart from those few times where you just screwed us kickstarters over.

Making PA must be something like playing a PA tournament. You said you where going to do it, but really the job seems impossible once you see what your up against. Then you still show up, and half the competition didn't show up for some reason, you work your *** off and use anything you got to take home the price... yeah something like that i imagine.

Carlo, it's less about what we say and much more about how we say it.

The discussion over the weekend on the Able commander did not need to get anywhere near as heated as it did. People were concerned, which is fine - that could have been expressed without calling Uber every name under the sun and flinging insults and accusations around.

Not aimed at you, by the way - there were people on both sides guilty of this.

It seems to me that most people don't fully understand the shenanigans involved in making a game, so they then make demands/ claims/ whatever, without grasping the amount of effort it would take.

Would you (or someone else) ever consider doing a short series write ups detailing what you deal with on a daily basis? Sort of similar to what Varrak has been doing with his graphic related updates?

You could call it : A day in the life of Neutrino

or even better: The daily **** I have the pleasure of dealing with.

I also don't think it makes any sense to give us any fixed dates for anything but the "release" (and maybe stuff you really know you will get to work within the next few days if you feel like it).

The point is that you seem to be afraid of creating false expections.

But the problem is that the expections are already there. People expect the Unit Cannon, they expect better performance, they expect Astroid Belts, they expect User Interface improvements, they expect Gas Giants, they expect a better balance, they expect graphical improvements here and there, they expect more interesting terrain and so on...

And they WILL be disappointed if it isn't in the game (especially at release) and many people will assume that it won't ever be there and instead they will be creating weird theories about you sitting on a sunny island counting unicorns.

The only way to combat that negativity is to create positivity by giving us some kind of information about what you plan to be working on (and label it clearly as a plan and not as something that's set in stone to avoid unnecessary confusion).

This can be a vague, unordered list (so if something gets pushed back, it doesn't really matter) or you simply doing some *regular* (so people always have something to look forward to) Q&As and answering stuff like this in an a bit more informal way (or whatever else you think is a good idea).
But what's really important (especially at release) is that as much of the playerbase as possible has some idea of what to expect in the future.
And if you have to scrap something or you know that people expect a certain feature sooner than you will be able to deliver it then tell people about it as soon as possible and give them the reasons for your decision.
If there are bad news, people will always be disappointed. But if something bad happens and people feel like they were not told about it, they will be mad. At you.

Because, as I said, if they don't have any idea of what your plans are, that WILL create negativity, because the expectations WILL be higher than what you can possibly deliver at release.
And as you saw in the not too distant past, even on these forums there is a lot of negativity about seemingly small things like the looks of some commander in the armoury.

But these forums seem to be a small oasis of sprawling positivity on the internet. On most places on the internet, there is an EXTREME amount of negativity and hostility towards PA. I don't know whether this originates from many people or whether it is from a few vocal people but it certainly creates an extremely bad impression to everyone who might be thinking about buying PA.

Let me end this with a little story:
On the Steam forums, some very angry people put up threads about PA being "Always Online" (*gasp*) and those threads grew quite long with other people complaining about that and many stating that they won't be buying PA because of this and and condemning you to hell.
The people who told them that PA will be playable without internet connection (mostly people I recognize from these forums...) after release were completely ignored because everyone was jumping on the rage train.
And all of that happens although it is written on the store page that PA will be playable without internet connection after release.

People SEARCH for negativity.
So you need to find a way to shove the positivity down their throat. Forcefully.