Vapourware Star Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

"WAH! Why does he get to drive that BMW while I'm stuck with this shitty Focus?!"

 

It's not about the money. I haven't contributed to this crowdfunding campaign because I find a lot of their methods distasteful. This is another drop in the bucket.

 

What I'm curious about at this point is what you and others like you would have them do instead.

 

yeah man, it would be impossible not to make exclusive backer content right

I get that he gets millions off of these cheap-ass gimmicks, and I would probably have done the same for the jewgold, were I him. But as a critical consumer, that's not my cup of tea, and therefore I criticize it. The fact that you don't call out the most blatant exclusives we've seen in mainstream kickstarters so far says enough.

But this conversation is fruitless. Like any of their exclusive content, you will dismiss it as unimportant and trivial thus justifying it 100%, and we'll shrug, and the thread will go on.

 

At this point? I'm not sure what they can do.

I don't like backer exclusive content, and I don't like the lifetime insurance policies. So those things are keeping me from contributing.

I will say this, they've gotten so much money, they don't need my $30-$50 dollars.

Also, it won't prevent me from buying the game when it comes out if it's good. If you want my money in a crowd funding situation, I hold you to a higher moral standard than some guy selling a product.

 

Grunker
Exclusive rewards of some kind for higher pledge amounts are invariably a feature of all Kickstarter projects, because if nothing additional is offered, then almost everyone will pay the bare minimum. This would result in hundreds of thousands or (in Star Citizen's case) millions of dollars of lost revenue. If Star Citizen reaches $21m raised, then no private investors will be needed, and it will be 100% crowdfunded. Thus, they're constantly brainstorming ways to bring in new pledgers (which the exclusive star system accomplishes in a completely harmless way, for all practical purposes) and get old ones to increase their pledges.

Basically, you can have your old-school principles (which don't apply to crowdfunded games in my opinion), and let's say we Kickstart everything that way—half as much money will be raised, and then everyone will get their completely fair and equal basic copy of a game at minimal cost, developed in half the time with half the budget. Or, you can stop being an angry twat and accept that some people will get signed collector's editions, art prints, various tchotchkes, a bigger ship or castle than you for a few weeks (or months, for big spenders), a statue in their honor, design a weapon or NPC, have a party with the developers, or whatever.

tuluse
No, I want a real answer. What would you have done instead from the beginning of Star Citizen's crowdfunding campaign in order to generate $21m by late 2014?

 

Well, I would have put a time limit on the insurance policy on backer ships. I think having it for one year would have been sufficient and not lost much if any money. Especially since you claim that insurance will be a negligible cost in the end anyways.

I generally just have a big distaste for exclusive content. I didn't like it in Wasteland 2 or SRR either, but I'm a weak man and I love RPGs more than space sims. It seems like Chris Robers went further past the line.

I don't know if I could raise 21 million. I probably couldn't, but that doesn't force me to contribute through some sort of logical trap.

 

I'd give up LTI for my small fleet of pledge ships in a split-second just so that people would stop complaining about it, if such a thing were possible. Chris Roberts also regrets ever offering it to begin with, since it's so widely misunderstood. LTI is nothing more than the waiving of a negligible fee—small for each individual player, but an enormous game-wide currency sink. Currency sinks are very important in massively multiplayer games. "Regular" insurance offers absolutely identical coverage for a negligible fee, and people with LTI ships will also buy new ships (and future variants) as the months and years pass.

The only reason LTI exists is to stupid-proof pledge ships. The game won't force you to pay the negligible insurance fee, so someone's eight-year-old could take out their pledge Hornet without LTI and it would be destroyed forever. LTI prevents this. Again though, everyone now regrets the existence of LTI since such a massive fuss has been made over it.

In a way, I agree with you. I dislike "collectibles" that are offered for a limited time only, then never again, such as special lightsaber crystals in the late Star Wars Galaxies, certain mounts in World of Warcraft, festival hats in Guild Wars, et cetera. Unfortunately, absolutely all MMOs have them, and as they're often "vanity" items only, their existence is easily defended. It annoys me that if I start playing a game three years into its lifespan, I miss out on stuff. Again though, all MMOs have them with absolutely not even a single exception.

Star Citizen has numerous exclusives: A special wing/nose decal for those who learned about Star Citizen before its official announcement on October 10th (I don't have one of these), two tiers of wing/nose decals for Centurion and Imperator subscribers, a Gamescom hangar decoration (for attendees or available to anyone for $5 until the end of Gamescom), the backer-exclusive system, and for $10,000+ backers, the private space lounge. All of these have absolutely no effect whatsoever on gameplay except philosophically in the case of the exclusive star system, but really, it's just a place I can go that Joe Blow can't and thus essentially a vanity item.

I'm not asking you if you personally can raise $21 million. You definitely couldn't, and neither could I. I'm just wondering what plan you'd have Chris use that is agreeable to you and that would raise as much money. The actual ill effects of the things you don't like are, I think, much less than you, Grunker, and others have built up in your minds, and while there are downsides to the incentives to pledge (and to pledge more $), the upside is no private investors required and all the funds needed to create a very ambitious game.

 

I meant I don't think I could raise 21 million as Chris Robert's director of finance for star citizen.

 

So... How long was Blaine's offer for the special $30 package up for and what was innit? The free insurance and a ship?

 

This isnt a upside.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

OK. What exclusive area do people get access to in Torment? What extra companion do people have in PE? Where's the part of the story that's locked for non-backers in Wasteland 2?

The community cried out when Fargo suggested a completely useless backer-only skill, and he had to remove that.

Star Citizen has the most blatant exclusive backer shit in terms of differantiating backers and players. It's pretty interesting that you even compare the other Kickstarter exclusives (like "come to a party with Fargo") with stuff that will actively be a difference between me and someone else in the game itself. Where's your normal sense of critical thinking? Star Citizen is clearly and unquestionably the game fundraiser with the most ingame benefit-peddling, yet you're completely unwilling to even accept that. Where are the Codex-approved projects with similar benefit-peddling? They don't exist.

Stop this bullshit side-stepping. This is a fact of all Kickstarters, yet Chris' is the only one that so heavily awards gameplay benefits to backers. But of course, you'll claim (without knowing) "ah but those are inconsequential" and then we're back at the fruitless discussion I talked about earlier...

 

pe has an exclusive ingame item.

 

It has a cosmetic pet with no impact on gameplay. How do you compare that to lifetime credits saving, head start with ships and exclusive star systems?

 

exclusive shit is exclusive shit, no matter whether it's purely cosmetic or has some gameplay consequences.

 

So there's no tiers here? A cosmetic pet and an lifetime insurance, additional ships and exclusive star systems are exactly the same? No way to discuss any difference between them?

Fuck that. I don't give two shits if someone can play his PE with an ostrich at his side. But making exclusive content a huge, vital part of your backing-system bothers me. If you can't even accept that there's a difference between some small token stuff and every single tier of the campaign relying on this stuff, then there's no way to argue about this.

 

the problem isn't that you are paying for access to ships and systems (other than it being lame, just like horse armor or a goddamn paid for pet). the problem is that it's a multiplayer game where you can pay for advantages over other players like better or bigger ships.

 

Is that a 'yes'? You don't ackknowledge that there's a huge difference between a token pet at all tiers and exclusive content being a defining part of your campaign with diverse ingame rewards based on your pledge levels?

We agree that the problem gets magnified by this being multiplayer, but it is not "the problem" as you frame it. The problem is a "Kickstarter" campaign that bases its funding on ingame rewards with gameplay implications.

 

what do you expect in the age of (shitty) dlc and microtransactions? i'm surprised they haven't started offering outright cheat modes as kickstarter rewards yet.

 

Not really relevant to the matter at hand. The fact is that Chris Roberts' campaign is aparty from other Kickstarter campaigns, which was the point you seemed to contest.

 

The king of all Kickstarters in terms of exploitative pledge options is definitely Shroud of the Avatar, bar none. The city housing plots cost $3,000-$3,700 apiece, will have a physical presence in the persistent universe and thus be limited in number, and none will be left available when the game goes live, save for those owned by pledgers. Also, all of the higher pledge tiers come with in-game titles of nobility that can't be gained in any other way, as well as plaques signed by Lord British and other exclusive collectibles. In contrast, the most expensive pledge ship in Star Citizen costs $1,000-$1,250 and will be available to purchase with in-game currency in unlimited quantities when the game goes live. The "exclusive" star system is free to anyone who coughed up the minimum within the two-year period before launch. There are no exclusive in-game titles for pay, and collectibles like ship decals and skins are for the most part very affordable and accessible to all, not to mention far removed from an Archduke title displayed above your character for all to see.

You may dismiss the importance of high-end persistent player housing and titles of nobility in a game like Shroud of the Avatar, in which case I can safely conclude you've never played Ultima Online, the average text MUD, or really any MMO at all for that matter.

 

You mean the project universally shunned as a blatant cashgrab on the Codex? That's the gist of it, isn't it? Star Citizen is more comparable to that than WL2, PE or something like that. Shroud might be worse, but that doesn't change the fact that SC is bad.

 

Just admit that you're so far down the hole that you have no other choice than to praise Star Citizen, Blaine. Admit it and perhaps DU can start a fundraiser to fill your emptied bank account once more.

 

Even if I were beggared by spending a few thou on a Kickstarter project—actually, I've spent over ten grand on video game Kickstarters, including $1,000 for Wasteland 2 and $2,000 for T:ToN—changing the minds of a few dozen tightfisted Codex fatbeards would do absolutely nothing to protect my "investment," nor alter the eventual success or failure of Star Citizen in any way. Furthermore, as I've mentioned several times before, I can cash out for a pretty impressive profit thanks to the grey market for expensive pledge ships. There will always be a few dozen or hundred wealthier fans out there who regret missing out on the Idris Corvette or the Vanduul fighter.

But here I am, wasting my time responding to the guy who used Freelancer as his basis for critiquing Chris Robert's team lead chops, a project the man departed years before its completion. You're halfway-decent at pulling bullshit out of your ass and making it sound pretty respectable (a critical Codex skill in my experience), but it fails when the person you're addressing knows the subject matter far better than you.