I'm in Star Citizen 3.0 but.......

[sulky_uk]

Funny, I was just going to suggest this.

Recommended specs:

• Windows 7 (64bit) with Service Pack 1, Windows 8 (64bit), Windows 10 â€" Anniversary Update (64bit)
  
• DirectX 11 Graphics Card with 2GB RAM (4GB strongly recommended)
  
• Quad Core CPU
  
• 16GB+ RAM
  
• SSD strongly recommended
  

@TeaLeaf: if I recall correctly, Star Citizen doesn't like SLI cards, and I think you'll get an improvement in performance if you disable it.

SC is very disk intensive, so I think an SSD is pretty much mandatory.

• 
  

All other boxes ticked. It weird the only games I have which need an ssd are ark, fsx/p3d and this.... everything else is ok on mechanical, including x plane and elite

Sent from my Swift 2 X using Tapatalk

[Twyst]

Something is badly wrong with the PU!

i5 4670k @ 4.2, 16G RAM, SSD, AMD Vega64.
CPU 75% usage max, RAM 70% usage max, GPU usage 60% usage max - when I hit 20fps GPU usage is 5%.
Sometimes I hit the giddy hights of 70fps but it *feels* like 30-40 fps (could be no sync tech on my panel). Most of the time my fps is reported between 30-40fps.
Network utilisation is fine, not maxing out my 400mbps wifi on my 200mbs internet connection.
The TV streaming netflix uses more traffic.

So, in summary, there is no bottleneck in my PC.
This is *worse* than alpha 2 was.

As a counterpoint, I have Wolfstein 2 which renders just as good detail to my eye @ 1440p with a lot more stuff going on on screen at a stable 116fps which is what I've limited it to at max detail.
At this point I have every faith that CIG can deliver a lot of good tech, but unplayable tech.
They've had over a year since I lasted walked around the crusader part of the PU and it's worse now than it was before.

[smilodon]

To be honest 3.0 is a mess. It's still full of bugs and performs dreadfully. CIG are good at a lot of things but managing player expectations is not remotely one of them. They have touted 3.0 as a bright new road to a full game, where 3.0 is playable and will be iterated upon going forward, building up towards the full MMO experience. The reality is that the game is still very Alpha and at best a flakey showcase of what might be coming. If CIG had made it clear this is not anything remotely like a small stable version of the playable game but just more incomplete Alpha builds we'd all be a lot clearer about what to expect.

I still think they will end up making a decent game. But now it's a bit more of a hope and a bit less of an expectation. CIG have had a long time to work on this and there is really very little to show. 3.0 certainly isn't the beginning of dMw adventure into Star Citizen and personally I've uninstalled it.

[albert]

Ironically, my laptop is beyond the recommended spec for Alpha 3 and I'm sure 5fps would be an improvement.

I can run the game on my desktop so will try it now there has been more bug fixing.

On a positive note, Escape from Tarkov which I mention in this post: https://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?43903-Escape-from-Tarkov runs super smooth and is about to go open beta.

They had some load issues last weekend, people had to wait 45 seconds to join a game but sometimes 2 minutes. They solved them quickly. The game looks amazing graphically and the in game interface and FPS/ weapon modeling is just awesome. Like you can take any part of your gun and examine it full 360 degrees, replace old parts, you have to load up bullets into your mags and onto your vest before going into the map. But it doesn't feel overwhelming.

[albert]

Check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etwETB-IaMs

Amazing detail. Real quality.

From personal experience now I tried it, the game runs on my 3 year old laptop very well. It's gripping fun and when I actually escaped with nice loot it's joyful. I did get sniped a few days ago nearing the extraction point with an SKS and a nice AK on my back, my own fault for not covering all angles.

[Obsydian]

To be honest 3.0 is a mess. It's still full of bugs and performs dreadfully. CIG are good at a lot of things but managing player expectations is not remotely one of them. They have touted 3.0 as a bright new road to a full game, where 3.0 is playable and will be iterated upon going forward, building up towards the full MMO experience. The reality is that the game is still very Alpha and at best a flakey showcase of what might be coming. If CIG had made it clear this is not anything remotely like a small stable version of the playable game but just more incomplete Alpha builds we'd all be a lot clearer about what to expect.

I still think they will end up making a decent game. But now it's a bit more of a hope and a bit less of an expectation. CIG have had a long time to work on this and there is really very little to show. 3.0 certainly isn't the beginning of dMw adventure into Star Citizen and personally I've uninstalled it.

While it's true that 3.0 is extremely buggy, it's also true that many players are experiencing wildly differing levels of bugs and performance, varying from those who find themselves simply unable to play without crashing or experiencing a game-blocking bug, to those who are able to play at 30+fps for several hours at a time, completing missions and triggering the mission givers, etc.  The 'average' experience I see people reporting is that it's playable, with graphic performance being around 15-20fps with the occasional stuttering, and the occasional bug or crash.  Some are reporting this to be the worst patch ever, while others are saying that it's the best patch ever...I guess it's simply down to how lucky you are...

With regards to whether it was ready for 'prime time', CIG were unfortunately in the same old 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' situation.  From what I can glean, they released it on the basis that it's 'stable' for most players; paves the way for delta updates; delivers all of the base systems that the rest of the game will be based on; and gives the masses something new to play around with over the Xmas period (the cries of 'give it to us already!' were getting kinda loud on the forums!), while delivering more telemetry to CIG regarding server usage and game crashes from the vastly increased player base.

There will be some hot fixes incoming over the next couple of weeks now that we have the delta patcher, and I'm fairly sure that things will improve quite drastically and the player experience to be better across the board.

The main things holding the game back now are Remote Bind Culling, Serialised Variables, Container Streaming and Server Meshing - all of which should improve the performance of the game at the client side (and several of which were dropped from 3.0 in order to get something out the door to the playerbase).

CIG have had a long  time to work on this and there is really very little to show.

I completely disagree with this comment.  The game is only just into it's fifth year of development, and there's probably another 2 years left to go by my reckoning before it's anywhere near ready for 'Gold'.  AAA games take between 5 and 7 years to make (Witcher 3, for example, was in development for over 7 years, and is a single player game with nowhere near the complexity of SC), and that's usually when the studio is already established and perhaps building on previously-defined game assets.  By contrast, CIG have not only spent the last 5 years developing the game, but they have also had to start and build a studio from the ground up at the same time, while also doing some major R&D on systems and procedures to be used by the game because they are attempting things that have never been done in any other game to date.  So, all told, I feel that we're pretty much on track.

If by this comment you mean that there's not much more content in this patch than there was in 2.6.3, then I can see how you might think that, especially if the afore-mentioned bugs have stumped your playing experience, however there have been huge amounts of changes and additional content in this patch, but quite a lot of that is hidden from the player as it is mainly back-end and under the covers stuff that will allow them to build out the rest of the game.  That said, if you look into what has been delievered with this patch, you will find the list to be very long.  Some of the highlights I can think of off of the top of my head would be:
Several new ships and vehicles
Re-worked ships (the Cutlass and Freelancer are both amazing!)
Item 2.0 added to all existing ships and doors
Intelligent door system
New UI system added to most ships
MobiGlas enhancements
Star map integration and navigation
Improved quantum drive and navigation systems
Fuel system is now up and running
Player health improvements, with oxygen levels now active, along with stamina that affects your oxygen consumption rate as well as your weapon aming ability, etc.
Planetary landings (this one thing alone is HUGE!)
Outposts
Wrecks, both in space and on the ground
Mission givers contact you for special missions when your reputation reaches a certain level
Missions now chain and branch
New weapons
New clothing
New armour
NPCs are now active - shopkeepers and random NPCs now acknowledge your presence
Persistence is now improved (but admittedly needs a lot more work!)
Beds and logging out now works (occasionally!)
Improved party system

I'm sure there's more, but I think you get my drift.

And behind all of this, there's the stuff that we haven't yet seen that is being worked on and stock-piled for future releases: new planets, new landing zones/cities, heck, even new star systems (4.0 is, I think, the number slated for the first iteration of multiple systems), public transport systems, as well as further improvements to the basic systems we currently have.

Yeah, it's buggy as hell, and probably isn't yet quite ready for DMW to start 'playing' on a regular basis just yet, but I'm inclined to believe that it's probably only a matter of weeks now before we get something that's stable enough for us to be able to start regularly logging in and practicing 'stuff'.

[TeaLeaf]

I have to say, I'm with Obsydian on this one Smilo, I think what they have put together so far is absolutely immense.   Are we there yet?  No.   But damn, the view from the back seat is beginning to look amazing.

(my 2 cents from someone for whom 3.0 is still not very accessible due to system performance issues, but is happy with status and progress).

[SithAfrikaan]

Nice post Obsydian, I've had a fair deal of fun in 3.0 I'm really quite impressed with all the progress, I just wish you all got to see the second to last build before it went live, maybe it was low player count or some strange bug, but that 60fps constant in the PU was just mesmerizingly good.

[albert]

I've done a fair bit of flying around the verse and so far it's been pretty nice. My PC isn't struggling too much but fps is 22-28 but I'm pretty sure that isn't as a result of a lack of gfx power as my GTX 1080 is at about 40%.

What really frustrates me is the lack of persistence. If I land at another location, go to bed and logout I always wake up again in that same bed in the same station. Am I just doing it wrong? It takes many minutes to get your ship and go off somewhere and actually land, I just want a break and come back the next day to resume.

[Obsydian]

You're not doing anything wrong Albert; persistence is only per server at the moment, and there's no guarantee that you will log back into the same server as before.  This is one of the things that CIG have said will be focused upon for the next major patch in March.  Personally, I don't think it will be fully sorted until they get the server meshing tech in place, when we will all be on the same single universe, with players being split between localised instances, with each instance being unique to a particular area.

regarding the FPS, that is currently bottlenecked by the server, not the client PC, so your spec is fine.  Again, this is something CIG have said they want to get sorted for the next major patch.  That said, 22-28 at this time is actually quite good!

[albert]

I read the same Obsydian re the PU side of things. I did one time log back in on my Herald exactly where I left off and was rather please. I'm enjoying the flight experience more now, I think the physics are working better for me than earlier releases. I'm still to try the analogue sticks on my HOTAS for thrusters again, since in early releases they were pretty my a 1 or a 0, no in between gradual control.

[Twyst]

regarding the FPS, that is currently bottlenecked by the server, not the client PC, so your spec is fine.  Again, this is something CIG have said they want to get sorted for the next major patch.  That said, 22-28 at this time is actually quite good!

They said that about this and the prior big update.
3rd time marks the fool.

[TeaLeaf]

I think we need to cut this whole thing a little more slack.   Big games take many years to develop and just because we are in a privileged position to have access at the moment we can have a tendency to forget that this is still alpha.  In the normal course of things we'd not even know about any of this, let alone be able to try it and complain.

I'm significantly invested in this project so yes I could be biased, but I also have a system that is resolutely refusing to play nicely with SC 3.0, so I should or could be one of the people at the front of the complaints queue, but I'm actually quite laid back about it.   Good things take time to develop and I see progress, albeit at what we might call slow rates, but the thing I see that keeps my confidence is the tremendous scope of the game taking shape.  To call it an epic undertaking is probably understating what is going on.  I'm waiting with baited breath for a patch or a system change (on my part) to let me experience these bugs and what is evolving.

Current weather: Cloudy with a chance of bug swarms.
Outlook: Simply awesome.

[albert]

I agree, I'm optimistic since 3.0.0 came out. I know the game performs well, the flying part is awesome, just a little push towards PU and I'll be like a pig in s%$t.