In my opinion SC has suffered from extreme feature creep. They should have stayed focused on a core of space sim functionality (whatever was in the initial KS promise). Talk of FPS functionality, for example, was a needless distraction.
As I see it, the FPS always was part of the original promise (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/descri...) and I think it will be good.
To be honest, I'm tired of space games like Eve or Elite:Dangerous where you basically play as the ship.
From the beginning I had hoped, that it would be possible to EVA and fight onboard of a ship - and what was a little hope turned into a solid part of the game.
Do I think my money is wasted because there is nothing to play yet? No, not at all. The goal of crowdfunding is to give the developers the time and money they need and safe them from cutting corners.
Elite, for example. Its great flying, but there is no story and nothing to do besides grinding for the next ship. They rushed the game out of the door and its "nice", nothing more.
Even if everything fails, even if SC is crap or vaporware, I won't be disappointed. Roberts and the others tried and, to be honest, if they pull it off, they might give the industry the kick it needs to get back from yearly updates to FIFA, Battlefield or CoD.
Oh, and BTW: Nobody complains when Blizzard runs late with their games :)
To be fair, they're not charging you years before the game is actually released
Your input is truly valuable in the development of Star Citizen since they are creating the game YOU want. They listen and change features once they get feedback (e.g flight model 2.0). If you don't think it is what you want you WILL get a refund.
They don't charge or promise anything. You do realise that? You do see the difference right?
That said: I'm mostly on your side here (as a SC backer..)
The Overwatch preorder is unfortunately the "give us money now for no good reason" sort of preorder and doesn't even come with beta access.
The gameplay displayed wasn't some buggy alpha with placeholders.
I am 99% certain Overwatch will actually be released, especially as it's gone in Beta which Pre-orders have access to(?).
As I said, you can't compare this to anything Blizzard does. Blizzard usually comes through.
I expressed my fears of feature creep an a massive increase in development time on forums and was dismissed by fans as "it's just a small detail" and "the underlying engine supports it".
It's naive to think adding seamless fps to a game of this scale wouldn't massively increase complexity. And if it's just a small detail perhaps it isn't worth it.
As for the backers I see lots of Post-purchase rationalization: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalizatio...
It's about having realistic goals. I would love to see another good space sim in the same vein as X3.
For my part I am not actually all that interested in a FPS component. But in trying to produce both at the same time SC may deliver for neither of us.
And people complain all the time about late games. But one of big differences for Blizzard is that they have nothing to prove, they have delivered big experiences and successful products quite consistently.