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

[buzz]

You're ill-informed. EVE Time Cards have been sold nearly since the game began, and serve almost the exact same role as PLEX—including being tradable for ISK and pilots, which translates into the ability to purchase virtually every ship, module, and weapon in the game, up to and including the enormous Titan superweapon ships and pilots capable of operating them. This was many years before the advent of PLEX. The main difference is that PLEX exists in-game, and a few other logistical details.

Wait, are you sure? Is this a legal precedent or are you talking about chinese gold ISK farmers selling ISK for game time on the black market?
I know you can/could sell time codes on the forums but I thought that was available roughly at the same time as the PLEX was introduced. Don't understand why PLEX was such a big deal at the time it was introduced if there was a legal precedent before.

That having been said, the principle under discussion is the same: Whether purchasing ships from other players or from the developers, the fact is that money can buy you a fleet of mighty ships in either game. In EVE, that doesn't matter, since skill at playing the game, experience with the game, and social connections are more important than anything else, and don't come quickly and easily.

The main difference is that the way EVE is doing it actually HELPS your second statement.
If you buy a ship/ISK directly from the dev, you're just creating something out of thin air.
But if you sell your PLEX for ISK in-game and then use the ISK to buy ships/chars/whatever, you're directly supporting the people inside the game, with months or years of experience. Those hundreds of millions a PLEX-selling newbie gets, they were made by a guy trading, mining, running missions, running anomalies wormhole space and so on. He is automatically superior to the newbie because of that experience and relations. The system in EVE is self-sustaining.
It's less "pay 2 win" and more "pay 2 hire others help me win". You still depend on others knowing and being useful in the game.

My point being that if Star Citizen is so popamole and shallow that buying a bunch of ships means you WIN THE GAME!!, then I wouldn't want to play it anyway no matter what the business model might have been. Either way, the business model doesn't matter except to jealous people who are unable to understand why someone else's ability to afford a $250 imaginary space ship doesn't affect them in any meaningful way except that someone else has something they don't.

Sure, but the point here is not whether microtransactions are shit or not, it's that a part of the audience hates is and is not particularly content with it. And that audience is usually correlated with the "hardcore" side of gaming, the guys who play Dota instead of League of Legends, the guys who stuck with Quake 3 instead of Live and so on.

It's all about satisfying a certain customer. Like I said, if SC wants to be a "World of tanks-killer", that's fine. But if you want something more than that, you gotta drop the money whoring shit or else expect criticism and contempt from people.

Finally, absolutely no one in this thread has presented a good reason why 20 or 30 million is "enough" or why 50 million is "too much." Reminds me of people who think a $20m Faberge egg is "too expensive," despite the fact that said egg was appraised and then bought for $20m. Why should they stop crowdfunding?

You don't think the fear of overbloat and saving marketing face are good enough reasons?

The problem is not them getting the money, if people are willing to support this game that's all fine and dandy. The problem is when they go out of their way to still sell ships at exorbitant prices and just generally make the shit stink. 500k backers, plenty of which have more than the starter ship? We're talking about the entire potential userbase of SC. In a couple of years when the game is released, there will be no point of selling credits and ships in the game because everyone on the planet has bought them already

At 20-so millions, they told everyone that the game is now completely funded from backer money, no more private investors. Basically, the game he planned to make in the first place has been funded. If he wanted to dispel the "pay 2 win" image, he could have stopped at that point and just leave the basic ships for sale, let a sense of exclusivity for the early backers who trusted him from the beginning. Shit, even the lifetime insurance thing didn't remain a backer-only comfort.

If he stopped at that point, the argument that he's not pushing a pay2win game would be infinitely more justified. The game was funded, the end justified the means and the game took a small inconsequential sacrifice for the sake of making it completely awesome. Whatever, there's a few tens of thousands of players starting with a better ship than me, no problem.

But when you get DOUBLE the amount you needed to make the game and you STILL sell ships, then it is just ridiculuous. At this point they should be fully focused on the production and work within the available budget, not keep shooting for the stars. It's not like those extra 30 millions dollars made for a faster production pipeline, and the extra things that are being developed do not matter that much and they could've put them in an expansion or something.

The best works, not just in gaming, but in art in general were not made by having the biggest budget. Yes, Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia were the most expensive films in their time, but throwing more than that amount of money didn't make future films any better. Some random superhero/sci-fi flick has a bigger budget than Lawrence of Arabia did 50 years ago, and we have tens of them every year.
Star Citizen has reached the list of most expensive games ever developed. Just look how many forgettable or absolute horseshit drecks are in there.

There's just a point in time when throwing a giant amount of money at a problem will not solve it, but indeed make it worse.

Really, it's a matter of opinion and guesswork. Past experiences and logic says that this game will either be a giant flop or the next world of tanks/world of warcraft/league of legends/call of duty, and I'm sure no one here wants that. You've already complained yourself about gimbaled turrets earlier in this thread, many others people who supported the game regret doing that, SC has gone full at this point and it doesn't seem to stop and change direction. If only for the sake of saving face against their original fans.

 

[J_C]

So, I decided that I give another try to the Arena Commander module. And again, it hit me that my rig is not powerful enough to run it on very high settings. I set it to the lowest graphical settings, where I get a constant 35-45 fps, and to my surprise, the game still looks OK.

Isn't there a detailed grapchical settings in the game, where I can set the individual effects? In the game, I can only set low-medium-high-veri high options.

 

[Blaine]

Wait, are you sure?

I'm sure. I played EVE for six years, and GTC trading had been around for a good long while before I began playing in 2006. ISK and pilots were traded for GTCs via subforum, though at this point I don't remember how the subforum(s) were subdivided or even what the forums' original URL might have been. Best I can do is EVE-Search's oldest entries:

I know you can/could sell time codes on the forums but I thought that was available roughly at the same time as the PLEX was introduced. Don't understand why PLEX was such a big deal at the time it was introduced if there was a legal precedent before.

It wasn't that big of a deal from a practical standpoint, although PLEX is flexible in ways that GTCs/ETCs aren't. Before PLEX, ETC traders had to go through third-party vendors to purchase ETCs with real money, then put them up for sale; those wishing to trade ISK for these ETCs had to use the subforum(s) to purchase them. Now it can all be done through CCP directly via PLEX and players can trade ISK for them directly in-game without having to go through the forums. PLEX meant more money for CCP, more convenience for veterans, and more convenience for sellers. Some people still do buy, use, and sell ETCs for various reasons.

It's player-to-player gold-selling. Importantly, PLEX and ETCs don't dump ISK into the EVE economy, but instead the ISK simply changes hands. SC however won't have a true living economy, as far as I know. In SC a lot of ships and weapons will be purchasable from NPCs, for example, which isn't the case in EVE, in which almost everything must be sourced and built by players.

The main difference is that the way EVE is doing it actually HELPS your second statement.
If you buy a ship/ISK directly from the dev, you're just creating something out of thin air.
But if you sell your PLEX for ISK in-game and then use the ISK to buy ships/chars/whatever, you're directly supporting the people inside the game, with months or years of experience. Those hundreds of millions a PLEX-selling newbie gets, they were made by a guy trading, mining, running missions, running anomalies wormhole space and so on. He is automatically superior to the newbie because of that experience and relations. The system in EVE is self-sustaining.
It's less "pay 2 win" and more "pay 2 hire others help me win". You still depend on others knowing and being useful in the game.

Or a pyramid scheme, depending upon your point of view. I made hundreds of billions of ISKies in my time and hadn't paid for an account in three or four years by the time I retired. Thing is, a lot of veterans would have quit playing ages ago if they couldn't play for free, so newer players who can't or won't take their time learning the game properly essentially subsidize them. This is a big part of the reason why EVE's population (literally half of which are subscribed alts, possibly more) continues to grow.

It's all about satisfying a certain customer. Like I said, if SC wants to be a "World of tanks-killer", that's fine. But if you want something more than that, you gotta drop the money whoring shit or else expect criticism and contempt from people.

In World of Tanks, I know they had shit like gold-plated premium guns, gold-plated armor, and so on that you could only buy with real money. SC's pledge model isn't like that at all. All pledge ships with the exception of the Scythe (which isn't objectively superior to a comparable fighter) are available normally in-game, for credits, and CR is on record stating he doesn't want SC to be a grindy game and repudiating obnoxious revenue models like WoT's. Also, unlike in World of Tanks, ship roles will be important in SC. Huger with bigger guns and armor won't = automatic victory. It's truly an apples to oranges comparison.

I've played some text MUDs in my time in years past, and believe me, I know what the ultimate final form of pay-to-win and immense grind is. Look no further than DragonRealms or any Iron Realms MUD.

You don't think the fear of overbloat and saving marketing face are good enough reasons?

The game's image is better than ever, at least in the mainstream and quasi-mainstream "gaming media," and hundreds of thousands of their customers are still begging for ship sales. People want to feel as though they own those ships.

It may turn out to be incredibly grindy, or have exploitative pay-to-win, or really anything you can imagine, though you're thinking in conventional MMO terms, and making your predictions based on Korean grinders and shitty dime-a-dozen F2Ps. Star Citizen is for all intents and purposes the first project of its kind. There have been a few twitch-based space sim MMO-likes such as Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative and Vendetta Online (which is still running), or even the cockpit-based space sim portion of Star Wars Galaxies, but Star Citizen is blazing new trails in a lot of ways.

 

[Infinitron]

Nobody's posted this yet?

 

[Ulminati]

 

[bonescraper]

Spoiler

 

[CSM]

Wait, are they turning it into an fps now as well?

 

[Ulminati]

As long as people are willing to pay hundreds of bucks for virtual spaceships, they'll keep adding "features" to milk them.

 

[buzz]

Blaine I just finished reading this thread and saw that you got a 2000 dollars profit out of selling two of your biggest ships.

that got me thinking ...

Is this game so well-funded because it's a "speculative bubble" ? Shit, buy some expensive ships early on, sell them much later and getting a net profit, I can see why people would give so much money to this game.

It could be true, right? I've seen some thread posted in here about the new Constellation variants, and plenty of people complained that the variants are too cheap and make the normal version useless. I guess they're afraid they can't sell their special snowflake stuff anymore

 

[CSM]

So I did some research and this is what I found out:

 

[Ulminati]

 

[Blaine]

Is this game so well-funded because it's a "speculative bubble" ? Shit, buy some expensive ships early on, sell them much later and getting a net profit, I can see why people would give so much money to this game.

There's no shortage of speculators, to be sure, but they were and remain a very small fraction of backers. Most of the best ships to make a profit from were sold before anyone had even the faintest idea how successful this project would be, and/or in very limited quantities. If not for "Lifetime Insurance" (which is misunderstood by most people), there'd be almost no speculation at all.

I bought my big-ticket ships in good faith with absolutely no intention of selling them initially.

 

[potatojohn]

Blaine, is that you on SSC?

 

[Bradylama]

Speaking of speculation.

Credit to RK47

 

[RK47]

 

[Mortmal]

Speaking of speculation.

Credit to RK47

Sounds like the victim of a sect's guru . Get rid of all your material belongings and i promise you the stars!

 

[Harold]

read the last few pages

what is this I don't even

 

[RK47]

Speaking of speculation.

Credit to RK47

Sounds like the victim of a sect's guru . Get rid of all your material belongings and i promise you the stars!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

 

[Ulminati]

URL to whole thread? It is a shame I already hahahahaohwow.jpg'ed on this page. This is even more oh wow worthy.

 

[Whiran]

I'm now confused about this game:

http://youtu.be/y4wAP1fWe8c?t=8m58s

In this part of the Chairman Episode, Chris Roberts is addressing a weird question (well, weird to me considering this was supposed to be a spaceships in space game wasn't it?):

My question is whether or not it will be possible to play this game as a pure FPS specialist? For instance, what if my character is a terrible pilot and hates flying? Will it be possible to exist planetside, engaging only in FPS encounters? Or to be a passenger flying along only as a boarding party member?

Chris Roberts basically says: Sure, you can do that. You might have to fly sometimes but... yep.

I musta missed something somewhere.

The next question was about deterioration of items - apparently they are planning that the majority of items will break over time in a manner that cannot be fully repaired so that you have to replace them.

 

[Blaine]

Well, ship-to-ship boarding will be part of the game. In theory, there's nothing to stop someone from crewing a Caterpillar with his friends as a dedicated marine, dispatching enemy crews, accruing (player) experience thereof, developing his (twitch) shooting skills, and using his share of the spoils from captured ships to amass a wide selection of weapons and armor.

I'd certainly question just how satisfying limiting oneself to FPS only would ultimately be, since the FPS portion is definitely a sideline and not the focus of the game, regardless of planetside arenas or whatever. That said, some people enjoyed the Jump to Lightspeed space sim expansion in Star Wars Galaxies back in the day and got a ton of playtime out of it, so it's entirely possible for a sideline to be a satisfying experience. Only time will tell.

 

[buzz]

Spoiler

I secretly want this game to get 10 times the amount of money it has right now so we can have a full-on Star Wars/Star Trek simulator, including diplomacy, exploring new wildlife and saving buddies from bounty hunters in shady criminal joints.


I honestly don't give two fucks about space dogfights, but a space opera type-game a la Starflight, with crew members handling different parts of the ship and living together in space, that sounds

 

[Ulminati]

buzz

 

[Bradylama]

What this game needs is a focus in development so they can reach a Beta phase instead of throwing it all up against the wall and trying to do every thing at once. The backer Beta is set to be a real trainwreck at this rate.

 

[buzz]

Hey, let a manchild dream , you scrooges!

Anyway, I hope something of that sort WILL BE in Squadron 42, if only in a linear, story dump manner. One of my favorite parts in the Wing Commander games were the briefings, hanging at the bar with my space buddies and just that story/character building between the missions. I guess it was somewhat confirmed, with the whole motion capture studio, right?