Star Citizen is free-to-play until September 23

[Polycount]

In context: Star Citizen has been the subject of quite a bit of criticism over the past few years, due to its slow development cycle and overpriced ships. However, despite the negativity, the game's developers have continued to forge ahead, and Star Citizen is finally starting to take shape.

Roberts Space Industries (RSI, the team behind the game) releases new features and mechanics at a much quicker pace than they have in the past.

Unfortunately, accessing the game and experiencing that new content isn't exactly convenient -- unlike most other titles, you don't buy a copy of the game. Instead, you buy a ship, which grants you access to it. However, until September 23, you can try the game for the low, low price of $0.

To celebrate the latest Ship Showdown -- a community event in which Star Citizen's players collectively vote for their favorite ships -- RSI is allowing anyone to hop into the game using one of the top 16 ships.

To do so, simply create an RSI account if you don't already have one, and enter the free fly code "showdown2950" on this page. Then, you can download the game client and begin playing.

If you end up enjoying your time with Star Citizen, you can snag a ship starter pack at a discount for the duration of the Ship Showdown event.

Star Citizen's gameplay is still limited at the moment, but there should be enough content there to keep you occupied for a while. You can land on space stations and explore them first-person, do a little trading or bounty hunting, or partner up with other pilots in multi-crew dogfights.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/86716-star-citizen-free-play-until-september-23.html

 

[Burty117]

They haven't had any new server tech go live since the last free fly. Trading is completely pointless because you will get a 30k error before you get a chance to sell and you'll lose everything in the process.

They seriously need to work on the server side of things for a while.

 

[Okami]

They haven't had any new server tech go live since the last free fly. Trading is completely pointless because you will get a 30k error before you get a chance to sell and you'll lose everything in the process.

They seriously need to work on the server side of things for a while.

Its new to the page but they show a stability score now.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry

Ive been playing the patch quite regulairy and can go a few hrs without going poof. And ive noticed that when I do, I have a good chance to get right back in where I left off. Sure they suck but 30k's are gonna happen being a alpha and all. Devs even stated that server meshing could cause more 30k's being the new tech that it is, just a nature of the beast.

 

[JoeBlobers]

Its new to the page but they show a stability score now.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry

Ive been playing the patch quite regulairy and can go a few hrs without going poof. And ive noticed that when I do, I have a good chance to get right back in where I left off. Sure they suck but 30k's are gonna happen being a alpha and all. Devs even stated that server meshing could cause more 30k's being the new tech that it is, just a nature of the beast.

This free event is way more stable than the last one called Invictus. As you mention, there are still error here and there which is normal in Alpha state. Also they are more persistence of objects.

 

[Burty117]

Its new to the page but they show a stability score now.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry

Na that's been around quite some time and is only displaying client telemetry data, not the servers, otherwise it would paint a very different story.

Ive been playing the patch quite regulairy and can go a few hrs without going poof. And ive noticed that when I do, I have a good chance to get right back in where I left off. Sure they suck but 30k's are gonna happen being a alpha and all. Devs even stated that server meshing could cause more 30k's being the new tech that it is, just a nature of the beast.

Do you get your cargo back? That's what's key, I completely get that it's Alpha and bugs everywhere but when you've grinded through missions to gain enough money to splash out on a big cargo run, then the server dies and you not only lose your cargo but the half million in cash you sunk into it, it's very disheartening.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I never got it to work. Easier to just play DCS WORLD.

 

[mrtraver]

I never got it to work.

Same. After about 10 minutes on a loading screen I finally got to the character creation section. I didn't care about my character so just scrolled thru a few presets and randomly picked one. I tried to then go to a world, but after a half hour on the loading screen I alt-tabbed out and uninstalled.

From what I have read this game has MASSIVE feature creep and funding mismanagement. Although I will likely never own it even if it is released in my lifetime, I would like to see it succeed.

 

[shroombab]

From what I have read this game has MASSIVE feature creep and funding mismanagement.

that is an understatement. star citizen has been in development for close to a decade now with no release date in sight.

 

[defaultluser]

They would need to pay me to play this trash. It's been in a active development for almost a decade, with hardly any of the Kickstarter features they promised.

The only people still playing this trash heap are the few thousand True Believers buying hundreds of millions of dollars in prerelease ships. They either ignore the mess, or they fall in love with paying to be directly involved in bug chasing (see: Evocati).

They are quite happy creating print-ready press releases for every $800 ship launched (even though you can't fly like half of them yet), so you can understand where most of their effort goes -the engine improvements are a tiny percentage of the effort.

When your entire revenue stream comes from brand-new pre-release ships, and Premium Evocati (paid bug chasers,) there's really no reason to ever release a final, stable game.

 

[m4a4]

Same. After about 10 minutes on a loading screen I finally got to the character creation section. I didn't care about my character so just scrolled thru a few presets and randomly picked one. I tried to then go to a world, but after a half hour on the loading screen I alt-tabbed out and uninstalled.

From what I understand you need to install it to an SSD. It's been a while since I've jumped in, and the last time, I installed it to an HDD. It was pretty slow to load things, not unplayable though.
At this point, I'm waiting until I upgrade my PC to install it again, and on an SSD this time (one big enough to store my games)...

 

[MasterMace]

Why would I want to play a game that's been in alpha for a decade, and likely to still be in alpha a decade from now?

 

[Okami]

From what I understand you need to install it to an SSD. It's been a while since I've jumped in, and the last time, I installed it to an HDD. It was pretty slow to load things, not unplayable though.
At this point, I'm waiting until I upgrade my PC to install it again, and on an SSD this time (one big enough to store my games)...

yeah if you dont install it onto an SSD dont even bother trying to play the game, After the initial load into the universe youll never see another load screen again and a HDD is just fundamentally too slow to keep up with it

 

[Okami]

They would need to pay me to play this trash. It's been in a active development for almost a decade, with hardly any of the Kickstarter features they promised.

The only people still playing this trash heap are the few thousand True Believers buying hundreds of millions of dollars in prerelease ships. They either ignore the mess, or they fall in love with paying to be directly involved in bug chasing (see: Evocati).

They are quite happy creating print-ready press releases for every $800 ship launched (even though you can't fly like half of them yet), so you can understand where most of their effort goes -the engine improvements are a tiny percentage of the effort.

When your entire revenue stream comes from brand-new pre-release ships, and Premium Evocati (paid bug chasers,) there's really no reason to ever release a final, stable game.

im genuinely interested to how you came to any of those conclusions

 

[Okami]

Na that's been around quite some time and is only displaying client telemetry data, not the servers, otherwise it would paint a very different story.

Do you get your cargo back? That's what's key, I completely get that it's Alpha and bugs everywhere but when you've grinded through missions to gain enough money to splash out on a big cargo run, then the server dies and you not only lose your cargo but the half million in cash you sunk into it, it's very disheartening.

yes if you dont get cargo back its because you lost the ship in the 30k, its all or nothing with a 30k. theirs even times where if you land near a sell point for the cargo and you do 30k and you respawn, you can go back to the previous location and the server will think the ship is still their and you can sell your load

 

[Okami]

Why would I want to play a game that's been in alpha for a decade, and likely to still be in alpha a decade from now?

the same reason you bothered to type that comment

 

[MasterMace]

the same reason you bothered to type that comment

I bothered to type that comment as a critique out of ridicule for a company that's so corrupt and poorly run, it takes them 20 years to release a game.

 

[Okami]

I bothered to type that comment as a critique out of ridicule for a company that's so corrupt and poorly run, it takes them 20 years to release a game.

Your "critique" is just a severely uniformed jab that's not even close to actual issues with the game. Particularly since the game was first announced in 2012... and its not like 8 years is some unfathomable time to make a game.

 

[MasterMace]

Your "critique" is just a severely uniformed jab that's not even close to actual issues with the game. Particularly since the game was first announced in 2012... and its not like 8 years is some unfathomable time to make a game.

Games with long development time typically have one of 2 things involved: 1, needs more money. Star Citizen is the most overfunded game of all time. 2, they end up mediocre.

-Duke Nukem Forever took 15 years, and released to mostly negative reviews. It struggled with funding as well. Total cost was around $26million?
-Prey took 11 years, and went thru 4 different leads? before it was made, mostly technical problems with the engine, did come out to positive reviews
-Too Human took 9 years, flopped between platforms, got sued, and eventually the dev removed the game from the Xbox marketplace, budget around $60-100mil
-Darkfall Online took 8 years, released to mediocre reviews, and servers shut down the same year

Like, I tried to search to see which other games had long development times, but 8 years puts it in the top 10 list. The games not listed above:

Diablo 3 (11)- Blizzard
The Last Guardian (9)- Team Ico (Shadow of the Colossus maker)
Team Fortress 2 (9) - Valve
Spore (8) - Maxis

Each of these had already made a hugely successful game, and so not a fair comparison for Star Citizen.

 

[Okami]

Well I had I reply but looks like the mods ate it, and as far as I can tell no reason was given for a violation if there was one