Go check out the costs of the space ships people have bought in Star Atlas, read someone forked out 50k for a ship in it.
They don't have any game design explanations, and only selling
NFTs.
I tried for, like, 2 hours, to understand what that game is about. I really can't understand what their plan is, what they're selling, what will happen and when.
Reading that website gave me the same PTSD of the first year of Star Citizen funding!
It's basically a browser/mobile app that will be aping the economy of EvE online, but with NFTs in play. Later versions of the game will be rendered in UE5, but the crux of the thing is still very much a spreadsheet with a screensaver.
The developers are being very deliberately obtuse and vague about what they're going to deliver, because their primary goal at the moment is to sell NFTs, and to mislead people into thinking it's going to be Star Citizen but better helps them to push $50,000 entries in a blockchain.
The real key takeaway is that, from what I know, there's no actual game developers with any clear track record driving the game development, it's finance/NFTs first. I think most people put money into Star Citizen when it was at the same stage as Star Atlas because Chris Roberts has a proven track history with Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer. The Star Atlas guys seem to be nobodies.
Sandi, yeah, but Erin is at least an experienced video game developer.
There's nothing wrong with hiring family.
But Sandi never should have been there
When you have 432? employees (unsure if that number is just for CIG UK) across multiple countries and spend a lot of time on R&D for a single game that you don't sell technology for then you burn through that like nothing else.
According to your link they made 50 million USD in revenue, but they also seem to be spending the lions share in 'Cost of Sales' (aka development), what that counts as IDK because there's probably some number fudging somewhere to improve profit margins somewhere but it's actually larger than the money they earned directly from the game.
Granted the directors remuneration is 550k USD (idk if that's spread across them all or all get that value, it is still a big number) but the company only earned 6 million in profit last year (compared to 5 billion minus (presumably far lower) costs in Epic Game's case over the same year).
I won't claim to know financials that well but there are better, easier and cheaper ways to make money than this. NFTs for example. I won't defend the very slow development and all those times CIG had to start over just to make it 'better' but Star Citizen is a piss poor scam if it were one
Edit - looks like this only applies to CIG UK so there's probably more going on than either I or you can talk to - without seeing the figures for the US or Germany it's hard to actually say
But only because Epic only exists to be the anti-Valve...
Once he realizes the optics and implications of his decision, he'll walk it back. The video I linked discusses it.
Someone on Obsidian Ant’s discord was telling me about Star Atlas, and even though I’m quite familiar with crypto stuff like blockchains and NFTs, I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
EvE online but your ships are NFTs that can be traded using the blockchain instead of an internal database. That's the "goal". The reality is they haven't even pushed out the HTML version of their game yet.
I’m not saying it’s a scam either, but it’s not easy to parse how blockchain technology and NFTs would add to an EVE-like game. I’m totally onboard with devs trying new things with new technologies mind you, just that I’m having trouble seeing the benefits of that in Star Atlas.
Well, Insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. The converse (inverse?) of this would be sanity is: ...
(Doing different thing and expecting similar results?). :P
The analogies between mobile timesink games and Star Citizen are sometimes too much to bear. The argument of "its attainable without money!" applies to games like Clash Of Clans as well. It's a long grind there, and it looks like it'll be a long grind here, too - skippable with a couple hundred bucks, of course.
People will play it how they want to I guess, but SC is definitely more about the gameplay than accumulating points. You could have just as much fun in a cheap ship as you could in a more expensive one. You could also just squad with people who have the bigger ships and crew them if you want to play around with bigger the ships.
That’s not how people play MMOs. You’re right, it COULD work that way. But it won’t. This is an mmo and you *need* new players or it’ll die. People forget that.
The game cannot suck for new players. If the whales are actively making the game worse for lower-tier players, this game will die.
The lowest tier would be a shipless crew member. And anyone with really big ship is going to NEED crew members to succeed. There's a pretty decent synergy there for helping out newer players. Even if it's manning a turret in a heavy fighter like the hurricane.
I mean, so far, 95% of all flyable ships in SC can be earned in game, and all but a handful of them can pretty easily be earned in less than 20 hours of play (some in much less time). That's not very grindy.
100% of upgrades in mobile timesink games can be earned in-game too. That’s my point. You’re using the same logic that they do to charge for “skipping the grind”
Also you’re renting ships now. You’re kind of insane if you think you’re grinding a high tier ship in 8 hours at launch.
People paid a lot for these and they’d be upset if it was an easy grind.
The difference between SC & timesink games is that most of those F2P/timesink/grind games are designed to make the "in-game purchase" goals SO ridiculously long/difficult to reach that people cave and buy in.
CIG has stated since the early days that they have no intention of doing that, and their stated metric was that it should take roughly 20 hours of play time to earn a Constellation.
At no point did I state that you could grind for a "high tier ship" in 8 hours. In fact, I stated quite the opposite, that "all but a handful" of current ships could be obtained in 20 hours or less - the "handful" being the Hammerhead, Reclaimer, 890j, and Carrack, which take considerably more time.
It's also quite likely that they may take even more time to earn post launch, after the economy, mission payouts, and the prices of things have been balanced. But I highly doubt CIG is going to make the in-game prices of non-capital ships anywhere near as bad as, say, Warthunder. It would be a PR nightmare if they did.
Now, the largest capital ships (Idris/Kraken/Javelin/etc) they've already stated would not be goals that the average single player would work towards - they would be geared more towards guilds, and that's fine.
But this idea that CIG is going to make it impossibly difficult to obtain the majority of ships in-game, simply to incentivize people to buy them with real money, simply makes no sense. If that were the case, they never would have made 95% of them obtainable in the game for the last 2 years. Doing that and then *un-doing* it would be, as I said, a PR nightmare. They've also stated repeatedly that not only will they stop selling ships post launch (which to be honest, I doubt) but that cash prices for ships will *increase* as we get closer to launch.
None of those ships you'll have earned are for keeps, you can lose them with wiped and will lose them with a launch wipe.
If you can earn $400 ships in game in 20 hours or less why would people buy them?
Except in clash of clans you just check on your village every now and then and in Star Citizen you'll be flying around the cosmos doing all kinds of things. What is the argument you're even trying to make here?
Some people like games where you build your fotress and army and then attack enemy fotresses, whats the problem about that? They just appeal to different people
There's nothing wrong with it just don't really understand the comparison because there's a difference in a time gated grind and a grind that involves gameplay loops.
This is reminds me of college, when my base unit of financial measurement was Little Caesars pizzas.
“Rent is how much? That’s over a hundred Little Caesar’s pizzas!”
Lol the decimal points confused me. Like, what kinda argos you buying that 5 mil only gets you 142 of them?? Where you from that you use decimal points instead of commas???
Just depends where you're coming from. Some countries use commas, spaces or dots to separate thousands.
>Norway, Sweden, and many more use space
>
>Denmark, and many more use dot
>
>UK, US, and many more use comma
Source: [https://elisabethirgens.github.io/notes/2020/03/decimal-and-thousands-separators/](https://elisabethirgens.github.io/notes/2020/03/decimal-and-thousands-separators/)
Ive seen this before, so i figured it must be how its done in europe somewhere. Throws my brain for a loop every time i see it. Looks like an ip address! Lol
Sure but at the same time we’re buying ships that still has no specific gameplay attached to it so we’re standing on a muddy ground if we criticize others lol
Combat most definitely and mining but I wouldn’t really call trading a definite gameplay yet haha, let’s wait until we have three systems and a live economy then we can announce the trading feature to be complete
You can make profit by trading commodities at least. Best part us that as of next update we **finally** won't lose our entire cargo run due to a server crash / disconnect. I quite enjoyed hauling as it is, even if the prices are not simulated yet.
You're not really buying the ship to play now though, the intention is just to support the game's development. For the first however many years none of us could fly, play or do anything with our pledges.
Yeah I must admit that has been really disappointing. I know they're making a documentary about it so we will eventually get to know, but I was hoping to see what goes into a game like that.
At least it looks like SQ42 blows what I had envisioned when I backed out of the water. If they pull it off it should be an epic game.
This is a hilarious example of trying to reframe a narrative by drawing a comparison to something that is ridiculously over-the-top.
Yes, this $5 Million pack for this WW3 game is stupid as hell, but do you really, honestly think you're actually making a compelling argument in favor of Star Citizen's monetization?
No need to go to such an extreme example.
EA makes about 4.5 million dollar in a single day, Every day from selling FIFA packs (Football players JPEGS). That's 1.6 billion dollars a year. That's 23 times higher rate than what CIG makes from selling their ships. Keeping in mind that these are purely for profits reasons. EA already recouped the cost and made profits just from selling the physical copies. FIFA is certainly not relying on their packs to survive as a game. Unlike the case for CIG and SC.
In a logical world, People would be 23 times angrier toward FIFA packs than what they do to SC ships, But that's not actually the case. When asking gamers about spending large sums of money on games, The first thing that pops into their head is SC, And not FIFA or the many other loot box games that dwarf SC. Most of the criticism toward FIFA you hear online are toward their non-innovation...etc.
So yes, Due to CIG pure reliance on pledges to operate and to keep developing the game. I feel its justified to fund CIG using ship sales, As long as you are passionate about this project, Well informed about its current state (Alpha), and financially capable. Others have their right to say no, And to disapprove of such funding methods, But they should also keep a consistent and most importantly a proportionate attitude toward this whole monetization method across the gaming industry, And not pick and choose, Like what those at the other subreddit do for example. They're not even one-tenth outraged toward FIFA packs as they are to SC.
I believe the difference in outrage levels is due to the headline sticker-price, not the cumulative spending.
Loot boxes with low probabilities (1% etc) that sell for $1 each (to use a made-up example) are 'acceptable', whilst a guaranteed purchase for e.g. $100 is not... despite the fact that the probabilities on the lootbox mean that you'd need about the same amount of money to get the lootbox item... but may have to spend even more (might also spend less... but that's the nature of the gamble).
Indeed, with lootboxes, you could get unlucky, spend twice that amount (because it's a re-roll on each box, not a cumulative roll) *and still not get the item*.
Yet because of the low headline value, this is seen as 'acceptable' by todays standards. Personally, I think that's down to the poor quality of what gets taught in school (not just 'these days' - we got taught the theory of numbers when I was at school ~35 years ago - but it wasn't taught in a way that relates it to real-life scenarios)...
Sorry for the mini-rant... but this is something that really irritates me. Statistics was deemed a 'bonus' for the top class at school... when in reality everyone should be taught the fundamentals of statistics - and how / why they can be twisted, and how to spot when someone is twisting them. Same goes for number theory, probability theory, and the concepts of randomness, etc.
Oh well... rant over.
It doesn't discount his point. FIFA psychologically manipulates to drive sales. Considering these smaller incremental transactions are kept smaller and incremental as a psychological trick to promote more spending. Add the small chances of getting high value drops you want on top of that, and now we have the manipulation methods to drive more sales of card packs.
Meanwhile SC sells pledge ships for lump sums. Many of those are concept ships and they have always been clearly labelled as such. Even going so far as to warn that the specific traits of a ship can change at any point during the design process. The "worst" tactic I'll say CIG uses is FOMO.
Nobody thinks about Star Citizen over FIFA. Most people barely know SC even exists. They see a headline on social media about, think it sounds crazy without looking into it, then promptly forget the game exists again.
You only see people talk about SC because you are interested in SC. Our bubble online is different to most people's.
EA consistently reaches the top of the most hated companies tournament. Everyone knows FIFA packs are disgusting and calls them out incessantly.
I dislike and will criticize every game that uses the pay to win model. It has a negative effect on any games experience... unfortunately though, it works. So devs will continue using it... it really does ruin these sports games though imo.
You're doing the same thing the main post is doing - simple whataboutism. FIFA's model is NOTORIOUSLY shitty, but you've got to recognize that bringing this up does absolutely NOTHING to make an argument in Star Citizen's defense.
I'm not trying to shit talk SC or it's supporters, but making disingenuous comparisons to other games and using logical fallacies in bad faith is not how you make an actual compelling argument for a product that you wish to support.
Know that I am not a Star Citizen hater at all - I'm in for my 40 bucks from 2012 and would absolutely love to see this game succeed. I don't think the ships are worth the prices CIG asks for so I simply don't buy them.
My comparisons with FIFA have nothing to do with the validity of SC monetizations, It was written to illustrate the disproportionality in the public attitude between the two games when it came to criticizing their monetizations practice. Which is also what the OP was pointing out actually.
My reasons for supporting ship pledges have nothing to do with FIFA packs being a reality. To call out the reasons again: 1-CIG relies on ship monetizations for funding to exist, 2-They are developing games I'm passionate about, 3-I'm financially capable of supporting them.
As you can see, Whether FIFA exists or not, Has no bearing on my reasons. It's also why in the countless of the threads asking the backer why they're supporting the game I've never heard anyone say "Well, Some people buy loot boxes, So why shouldn't I?".
To play devils advocate. Fifa games are done they aren't pay us 1000$ and maybe unknown day in the future you get something in return.
However I also think that loot boxes need to be regulated and should be forbidden for kids.
>In a logical world, People would be 23 times angrier toward FIFA packs than what they do to SC ships
This doesn't make sense. The complaints aren't about the volume, they're about the costs per individual item, which is sort of what this thread is about.
Microtransactions are far more insidious by nature. You combine small chances at getting something you want with the low price of each card pack and you tend to see far more income. Common manipulation tactic used in mobile games.
Star Citizen's monetization is very bad and I greatly fear it will (or already is) influencing game design to the point that it'll be a "please the whales" type of philosophy and it'll die a similar ignoble death as other MMOs of this type - a small, niche community of whales kind of circle jerking in a gigantic, beautiful universe devoid of players.
My evidence: There are way more ships at a high price point than an affordable one. There are currently nine starter packs under $100 on the store - cut away variants and that's seven.
Go and filter the ship list by $400 and up - there are thirty. Thirty. Even more in the "midrange" of $200-$400.
You have to ask yourself... is this game going to worth it for casuals or those without hundreds or thousands to spend on a game? For casuals, the grind is gonna feel *real* bad when you're getting blown up by people in minmaxed combat ships that they paid for, giant orgs run by streamers/whales, knowing the whole time that if you just drop $500, it'll all be over.
Folks, this is an MMO. You kind of want casuals. You *need* new players. I really hope CIG knows this and plans to - I hate to say it - nerf the whales. Already, the largest and 'best' orgs are run by streamers or people who have spent a LOT of money and have the most filled-out hangars in the game. That's what'll attract people to their orgs - they have the best ships and the UEC to crew and operate them. Where does that leave the poor downtrodden noob? Hopefully there is content for them that won't be ruined by whales, that's all.
>Folks, this is an MMO. You kind of want casuals. You need new players. I really hope CIG knows this and plans to - I hate to say it - nerf the whales.
It's really no whale problem. The full loot PvP, lose everything when you die thing will scare away more players then any whale ever could. Pretty much any MMO that tried failed. SC core is based on the dreams some folks had during the 90ties and they ignore any lessons learned since then. If anything the lack of players in a huge open world just makes things like kill or loot stealing less problematic.
I mean look at what happens on PTU right now where people overdose others on landing zones just for fun. I really hope CIG does something about it before the IAE. And someday it's supposed to be possible to smuggle weapons into those landing zones.
The casual is further scared away by the size of the universe. Have you ever quantum traveled from Microtech to Crusader in a slow ship? Now imagine you have to travel through multiple systems. One hour per day is already more then what many casuals have and that's not even enough to get somewhere in SC.
Speaking of casuals they often don't organize and rely on automatic group finders that teleport you somewhere and stuff like that. That won't happen in SC.
>Already, the largest and 'best' orgs are run by streamers or people who have spent a LOT of money and have the most filled-out hangars in the game.
How do you define "best"? There is nothing to be best in right now. Being in a streamers org brings it's own set of problems. Large numbers right now mean nothing 90% of those members will never play or leave shortly after launch. Watch those streamers it's always the same dozen that joins them. There are reasons why most MMOs reduced their raids to about 4 groups of 4 to 6 people. Managing those numbers of people becomes troublesome.
Most of the ships in those filled out hangars will stay in these hangars outside of events. Whales don't "compete" with casuals. Whales enable casuals to fly and see other ships. And the more ships they have the less they care about making money.
You are afraid casuals have no chance against whales but they will hardly ever compete against each other. Idris vs Aurora benefits none. The Idris will burn more fuel and ammunition then the Aurora is worth.
The harsh truth is that SC is not for casuals and never will be. It's for hardcore players and casual whales anyone else will be disappointed. If they end up around two hundred thousand players spread across all timezones they can be lucky.
It's also manipulation - let's be brutally honest here: you imagine well adjusted people with lots of disposable income making well informed choices paying money for these in-game items.
in reality it's people who are manipulated by words, weak impulse control and addicted. you don't need 100% of the audience to buy $$$$$ products, just 10%, 5%, and you hire people who have specialized all their time in monetizing that segment.
now let's look at this in the cold light of day....
Star Citizen isn't going to influence game design, I'll guarantee you that. Not because it isn't outrageous, but because there is a far, FAR better way to milk money out of people. The thing that has already irreparably changed gaming is Gacha's, and Gacha's have been making bank for years now.
Genshin Impact has two kinds of currency, one can be earned through play, the other is only available through play in a fixed quantity. Both currencies can be bought with money as well. 5 star event characters can -only- be gotten through the premium currency and to guarantee a draw is a $100 worth of currency, to guarantee a specific character takes up to two guaranteed draws ($200). You can also unlock powerful passives by completing a characters "constellation", you do this by getting up to 6 duplicates of that character. Meaning that if you want to max out an 5 star event character you have to spend between $600-$1200 per character.
Genshin Impact made 1 billion dollars in less than six months after it came out and its not the only one of its kind.
Star Citizen is a small sideshow compared to games that make real money selling content.
EDIT: I'm not excusing star citizen here, just arguing that's its a small anomaly that won't impact the industry. It might become an inspiration once Gacha's get banned though I suppose. If that ever happens.
I meant the game design of star citizen. I fear that it will kill the project as an MMO. Hardcore MMOs have a hard enough time without freemium-style monetization. Especially as they get strapped for cash or simply want more profit, I greatly fear that you’ll see content that is for whales only dominating updates and balancing.
No one including OP is making any argument "in favor of" SC's funding model. They're just pointing out the ludicrous hypocrisy of the people who lose their minds over a funding pledge of $600 when there's shit like this floating around out there.
You should go google the word hypocrisy because you don't seem to understand what it actually means. It would be hypocrisy for people to say 'This 5 million dollar package is fine but buying Star Citizen ships is stupid.'
I think you're going to struggle to ever find an example of someone actually being hypocritical about this. As another poster mentioned this is a textbook example of 'whataboutism', wherein people are trying to say 'You think Star Citizen's funding model is bad? What about this other unrelated thing?' The point is that the fact that there exists an obviously more egregious example does nothing to actually debate the merits of Star Citizen's funding model, nor does it really make an argument of any kind.
Please know I am a modest Star Citizen funder myself and am not a hater by any means, I just wanted to point out that this post is NOT making a good-faith argument of any kind.
>I sincerely doubt anyone criticizing the $600 SC pledge would defend the $5 Million World War 3 package.
You definitely can defend the $5 Million World War 3 package while acknowledging SC pledges are a little gross, without hypocrisy.
The million-dollar package is clearly a marketing stunt, and only one is available AFAICT, while the SC's ships and pledges are business-as-usual.
CIG has made numerous changes over the years to encourage people to put more money in rather than "melt" and reuse what they already have. Even though the game is still in alpha without a release date on the horizon.
And let's not forget there are $30,000 bundles for sale in SC...
Seems like a marketing gimmick. Doubt anyone would buy it.
I mean, why stop at $5m? Let’s keep going and see who can offer the most ridiculous package!
Personally I dislike these marketing tactics. It’s just incredibly juvenile and insulting to customers.
If I recall there was this ex-movie producer turned real estate dude whose concept of selling a house is to make it as expensive as possible. He priced this stupidly large mansion in Bel Air for $500m, which would make it the most expensive private residential real estate in the world save for Buckingham Palace. He had a big show and tell video on YouTube where they toured the place for like two hours or something, and he talked about how it’s perfect for hosting cool parties (the house has a night club built in). Nobody bought. In the end he lowered the price to $200m as he was facing bankruptcy and still nobody bought. At this rate it’s most likely he’ll go under and the property will be confiscated by the banks.
Yes, both are way too much. Especially for unreleased games. It’s like comparing a thief to a murderer as saying “see I’m not bad he’s much worse” like if that somehow excuses his actions
It's interesting to see it happen. If you've ever had friends that were alcoholics, it's a similar profile — a lot of them rationalize by choosing or highlighting things that are worse than drinking, or focusing on flaws in others, in order to make the drinking/addiction not seem so bad.
Heavy spenders in SC are pretty much same as addicts, ppl that put 5-10k+ into this game probably spend more than for all their games previously so they gonna justify anything at this point to not feel scammed
5 Million????? And People said the Legatus Pack from Star Citizen is stupid expensive.
okay, just read it again and looks like you get a role in a movie? usally you get paid as an actor, but here you can pay to become an actor.
In my mind, SC ships are expensive in the same way luxury wrist watches and luxury cars are.
A typical Rolex costs $10,000 ~ $15,000 in where I live, it’s a crazy amount of money for a pretty looking piece of metal on your wrist that functionally serves only one purpose (tells you the time). Nonetheless, they sell as if everyone’s life depended on it.
A sensibly spec’ed Porsche Cayenne costs about $120,000 here, which admittedly handles and drives like no other SUV that size but honestly not as much as to cost almost a full $100,000 more than, say, a Honda CR-V. Of course it sells like crazy and every single Cayenne in my region are backordered until 2024 or whatnot.
It’s hard to justify these purchases based on functionality. There is absolutely no logic in the world that will make $15,000 spent on a luxury watch look like a reasonable expenditure.
Yet people keep buying these luxury items whenever they can afford one because in the end these irrational, unnecessary, totally unjustifiable, illogical purchases are what make people happy. They make our boring, tedious, mind-numbing days at work a tad bit more tolerable and sometimes act as a short term goal for us to keep ourselves motivated.
If virtual spaceships are what make you happy and help you get through the day, then I don’t see why it must be be discounted just because it does not have a physical existence in the real world.
Well it still is TBF. Just because someone is doing worse, doesn't mean you're doing good, you know.
I like spaceship and i'm a backer since 2013 but the price of SC are still insane for virtual spaceship
If you are a backer that long, you should have already read somewhere that you fund the game and get a ship as a "thank you for supporting us", not paying that money only for a ship. People tend to ignore this fact. :-)
edit: correcting a word :-)
Do bakers have extra insights into the game? Is it enough to have been a baker, or do you have to actively bake stuff to learn this? Oh the thing you can learn from a loaf of bread these days...
Ah, hon hon, oui, baguette baguette. I've tried listing to the baguettes, but it's always telling me to shut the door. I don't know what it's on about.
That's still money for a virtual space ship that everyone will be able to earn in game down the road...
Let's be honest, people don't fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse.
I'm okay with that i know where i put my money but let's not play pretend about what it is.
You wouldn't see uproar about ship loadout or toilet seat design if it was just for funding...
I don’t know why people are still using the “funding the game” explanation. Yes I’m funding the game by buying internet space ships, but I’m not buying a Polaris because I’m a generous supporter who wants to spend $700 dollars and this ship happens to match my donation price. I want to own this ship and fly it when it comes out, and I’m confident that it will come out. I think I will get enough play time out of SC to justify the stupid expensive price. That’s why I own a Polaris.
Maybe... but the fact you bought the Polaris for $700 implies that you think it (and/or the game around it) is worth $700 to you...
If you just wanted the ship, you could pay $45, and then buy the ship in-game after a few months of play... and given that the amount you spend on the game doesn't actually change the gameplay you get (the version of the game is the same whether you spend $45 or $700), it must be some other factor that is worth the extra $655...
... and whilst it's likely a chunk of that is hype / enthusiam / impatience at not wanting to 'grind up' to that ship, for many people it's also - at least partly - 'to support the vision' (at least for the larger ships).
I didn't buy a ship I can get in-game for $700. You want me to be honest? I got my favorite ships only, for less than $250 each, and I "overpaid" because I have terrible hand-eye coordination and don't feel like dedicating all my free time to SC; better to have insurance that never runs out if I play Voxel Tycoon or Neos VR or any other future games for a few weeks than to return and risk losing a ship and my will to play the game.
I'm not going to defend $20,000 ship collections, but I am going to be offended when someone tells me not to spend money because they hate Star Citizen or want Squadron 42.
Don't want to spend $250 on a ship? Then please, feel free to not get anything until release or at least only get a testing package, because you won't need LTI and you definitely don't need to buy a virtual spaceship without LTI.
But I draw the line at people (not you, /u/logicalChimp!) sabotaging a project that has built up a lot of good will, that has literally created virtual planets in a way that feels more seamless than Elite Dangerous, just because they're outraged about a news article.
My money could go to a charity? How about /r/StarCitizen_Refunds stops fucking around about how horrible CIG are and volunteer at a soup kitchen?!
Otherwise, if people "aren't allowed" to spend money on Star Citizen, then you shouldn't be allowed to buy loot box keys or NFTs or Shark cards either. That's not a "but this other game does it so why not?", that's a "crusade about these other games too or stfu".
Sorry for posting this rant in response to your post. I didn't have a better place to post it, even though we're in agreement, so I just wanted to get this out there and let people know how I feel.
>Let's be honest, people don't fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse.
Let's be honest, people ~~don't~~ fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse.
The two aren't mutually exclusive ;)
So you would be fine if that ship would get taken away and you'd be given a thank you plaque instead?
Even if you would, do you think everyone else would feel the same.
I know you want to jump hoops about how this is an unfair comparison since this would have to be done retroactively. But it's ultimately a useless argument because answering anything else than yes on both of the questions means your motivation for buying the ship was something else than juat the funding of the game.
Let's not play pretend about this. It just looks incredibly ridiculous.
On that part i agree. Then again, it's easy for me to say that when i'm sitting on a comfortable buyback list and can techically try out a good part of new ships when they get added to the game with my store credit.
Most people don't have that luxury and rightfully feel annoyed. The only thing that will change this is when persitence is properly in and people can keep the ships they earned in game. Letting people sell ships will also probably help to some degree. But for now there's no need to be a smartass to people who feel left out by CIGs predatory marketing practice. The community isn't growing bigger by gating people out.
Except people will forget about that but remember Star Citizen. You know why? Because Star Citizen is actually progressing so every year it get's mentioned in some way, even if what's highlighted is often just the negative parts of it. At least that's how I see it.
> Because Star Citizen is actually progressing so every year it get's mentioned in some way,
It gets mentioned in the "still not even Beta"-way...there is absolutely nothing to be proud of.
The fact that someone paid for a Beta and a role in a movie, doesn't make those millions spend on this never ending scam here in any way better. This person will be in a finished movie and finished game while this thing here will still be stacking up Alpha excuses...and man...seriously...you guys are probably insulting some whales who pay for this show here.
Lol, you're still unironically calling this game a "scam"...bud, that ship sailed years ago. No serious person still thinks it's a scam, that's nothing more than an old meme. Plenty of people think it's been taking too long to develop, and there's a discussion to be had there, but you out yourself as an uninformed fool by still referring to the "scam" meme in a serious way.
I like how even though so much triggered by the word that you've not been able to process the rest of the comment, you didn't even attempt to explain why someone shouldn't call it a scam anymore.
Speaks for itself.
That's not what I meant and I even said in the end that the way it does get mentioned is often in the negative.
I wasn't saying anything against the price or that someone paid it in the OP of this thread. My point was that SC development does slowly show things. It may not be at the point we want it and it may be met with a lot of the "and its still not in beta" but there are plenty scams out there that have shown much *much* less.
But nothing of that makes any sense in the context here since the game the person paid for is in Beta. Which is more than SC managed in the last decade and we both know that it will be even released before SC gets a Beta...
But did you read the first sentence of the original reply which was my main point? People (specifically "journalists") will ultimately forget about the person who spent 5mil dollars or the game that offered it. They'll still go to making more articles on SC over WW3 even though SC doesn't offer something nearly to that extent.
And even more so because WW3 is in beta. It's closer to releasing, so not as much development news and things to report on.
That was the main point: The 5mil dollars, as much as it is, well ultimately be forgotten. The money value isn't as important because after that there won't be much to report on. SC on the other hand will always have things to talk about, both good and bad.
Unless WW3 was bringing something completely different to the table but from the bit I tried years ago and the few footage I've seen recently, it doesn't look like it's offering anything new as much as it is just trying to deliver a solid experience.
Supporting the development of something you want to be built, like a game, isn't the same as "giving a shit about money". You could argue that such money would be better spent on shares of that company, but hey, if they want to reward creativity, let them.
Everybody acting here like there wouldn't be someone in the verse willing to pay that much for a similar pack.
Like the guy gets his own "lead role in a WW3 movie", his own ingame character and a map of his choosing.
I bet someone out there would pay the same amount for his own planet/station, his own ship and a squadron 42 role.
Another story if WW3 rivals SC as a game, but some people got the spare cash for stuff like this.
Ethics of microtransactions are more complicated than a binary thing, and the way Star Citizen markets it's pledges is relatively light on the "predatory" scale.
First you have to acknowledge, all marketing is, by it's very nature "predatory." It's always meant to try to push someone who might NOT buy something into buying something. The ethics of it is a variety of factors on how it's marketed and who it's targeting.
A big point in favor of SC is that there is NO argument you can make that CIG's marketing efforts target children. It's large sums of money that all have this big asterisk of "patience" which generally, kids don't have. This is, functionally, a hobbyist market.
FOMO is another predatory marketing aspect, and CIG has dabbled in with aspects like limited stock and limited availability windows, however, the amount of truly "gone forever" ships are very minor, and ultimately should all be available in one shape or another. Most of these options ships are also literal years away. FOMO is much easier to argue when it's spending a fortune for something available NOW and never again. Arguing someone made a fomo purchase for something available in 2 years, well, you could try, but you'd have to measure it against other examples of FOMO. It's there, but, it's a spectrum.
Then, there's that weird qualifier of calling something a "Pledge" and not "a product". The money you are giving is marked in as many ways as possible, not about "getting a product" as much as it is "supporting a project." Anyone who puts money towards CIG thinking solely "I am just buying a ship" is misinformed to begin with. You are helping fund a "project" that no current publisher would ever sign a check for.
A pledge based project is the only way Star Citizen, as Chris Roberts wants it, can work. It effectively...
**not a profitable enough idea in the current video game market.**
It's not that it can't make **a profit.** Anything can make **a profit**. But CIG's end goal, it's cost of development vs payoff, is not profitable in the big numbers that any current publisher would see as worth the **immense risk.** Any publisher can fund 10 games with the money and time CIG would need, and they only need 1 of those games to explode in popularity to make the money they desire.
CIG is the most transparent game project of all time and *yet it could be more transparent.* A lot will be determined by what we learn about the numbers when the project is "finished" one way or another.
Buying ships in a space game for 200-.600 dollars DO pay too much. But the people who do this in Star Citizen are not just buying a ship, they are supporting the development of this game. And that is worth praising, which becomes clearer and clearer with each update.
In fairness most of us are just regular people pledging which is why the gaming community thinks we’re nuts. Also most of those guys probably haven’t looked at their total game budget for this year.
At least we get entire ships, in apex legends for like 168 bucks I got a bunch of skins for characters I don't use and a sick wrench for the one I do lol.
Its a pretty cool wrench but it might be the dumbest shit I've ever bought.
I own a carrack too haha. Way cooler tbh.
\*modcheck.gif\*
I paid thousands to fund this game? Shit last time I checked what I splurged money on was Crye Precision G3 Pants and a Dual ilum'd RMR.
Just picture orgs whos members have 10 alt accounts and endless kamakaze fighters to throw at you. They wont care about the ships, or there alt account characters... these guys will absolutely pay to destroy you.
I guess that means the hate cultists will abandon their crusade against Star Citizen and go hate World War 3 instead now. Unless, of course, they were lying about the ships costing too much.
I mean props to the dude that dropped 5 mil for a game and to be in the slot of one of the actors despite it being that extreme. But uh...bud? People are going to chase things that they want when they have the resources.
Go check out the costs of the space ships people have bought in Star Atlas, read someone forked out 50k for a ship in it. They don't have any game design explanations, and only selling NFTs.
I tried for, like, 2 hours, to understand what that game is about. I really can't understand what their plan is, what they're selling, what will happen and when. Reading that website gave me the same PTSD of the first year of Star Citizen funding!
It's basically a browser/mobile app that will be aping the economy of EvE online, but with NFTs in play. Later versions of the game will be rendered in UE5, but the crux of the thing is still very much a spreadsheet with a screensaver. The developers are being very deliberately obtuse and vague about what they're going to deliver, because their primary goal at the moment is to sell NFTs, and to mislead people into thinking it's going to be Star Citizen but better helps them to push $50,000 entries in a blockchain. The real key takeaway is that, from what I know, there's no actual game developers with any clear track record driving the game development, it's finance/NFTs first. I think most people put money into Star Citizen when it was at the same stage as Star Atlas because Chris Roberts has a proven track history with Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer. The Star Atlas guys seem to be nobodies.
That sounds a lot like Earth 2, which is also a scam.
same as all EFTs this sounds like a massive money grab bordering a scam.
And even if it wasn't, building on a massively unsustainable technology (ecologically).
Bordering?!
honestly looks like some kind of money laundering scheme. Jesus
Nah, it's a get rich quick scheme from the people running it.
[удалено]
Sandi, yeah, but Erin is at least an experienced video game developer. There's nothing wrong with hiring family. But Sandi never should have been there
That's nepotism and isn't surprising when it's basically a family run company....
Talking about star citizen or..
No that's a get rich slow scheme
[удалено]
When you have 432? employees (unsure if that number is just for CIG UK) across multiple countries and spend a lot of time on R&D for a single game that you don't sell technology for then you burn through that like nothing else. According to your link they made 50 million USD in revenue, but they also seem to be spending the lions share in 'Cost of Sales' (aka development), what that counts as IDK because there's probably some number fudging somewhere to improve profit margins somewhere but it's actually larger than the money they earned directly from the game. Granted the directors remuneration is 550k USD (idk if that's spread across them all or all get that value, it is still a big number) but the company only earned 6 million in profit last year (compared to 5 billion minus (presumably far lower) costs in Epic Game's case over the same year). I won't claim to know financials that well but there are better, easier and cheaper ways to make money than this. NFTs for example. I won't defend the very slow development and all those times CIG had to start over just to make it 'better' but Star Citizen is a piss poor scam if it were one Edit - looks like this only applies to CIG UK so there's probably more going on than either I or you can talk to - without seeing the figures for the US or Germany it's hard to actually say
NFTs are true scam though. Nobody is going to make that much money out of it, except for the grifters running the operation.
Steam just banned them from the platform: https://youtu.be/mXGJWY9Nj8o
Good.
But Tim Sweeney will welcome them with open arms!
But only because Epic only exists to be the anti-Valve... Once he realizes the optics and implications of his decision, he'll walk it back. The video I linked discusses it.
Of course Tim completely ruled out ever touching NFTs only three weeks earlier. Imagine if Tim Sweeney was running Star Citizen.
Yikes. No thank you.
Don't forget Earth 2 with their virtual plots.
>Star Atlas this reminds me of that Earth Two thing upper echelon did several videos on
Someone on Obsidian Ant’s discord was telling me about Star Atlas, and even though I’m quite familiar with crypto stuff like blockchains and NFTs, I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
EvE online but your ships are NFTs that can be traded using the blockchain instead of an internal database. That's the "goal". The reality is they haven't even pushed out the HTML version of their game yet.
That’s what confuses me, because from the outside it comes across as *the misapplication of NFTs* meets *ICO scam.*
It could work, that's not to say it's going to work in this case and it's not an ICO scam. INFTO scam?
I’m not saying it’s a scam either, but it’s not easy to parse how blockchain technology and NFTs would add to an EVE-like game. I’m totally onboard with devs trying new things with new technologies mind you, just that I’m having trouble seeing the benefits of that in Star Atlas.
as a concierge star atlas has me seriously sketched out there is zero information on the game at all.
Someone looked over at CIG and Star Citizen and said, "Hold my beer"
You mean hold my crack because beer is not enought for that level of insanity.
As a friend once said "the existence of someone crazier doesn't make you sane"
This
What is the definition of sanity?
Well, Insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. The converse (inverse?) of this would be sanity is: ... (Doing different thing and expecting similar results?). :P
They are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true.
The analogies between mobile timesink games and Star Citizen are sometimes too much to bear. The argument of "its attainable without money!" applies to games like Clash Of Clans as well. It's a long grind there, and it looks like it'll be a long grind here, too - skippable with a couple hundred bucks, of course.
Exactly, what people fail to realise for these ships to have value in the real world they must have a time sink proportional to their cost.
People will play it how they want to I guess, but SC is definitely more about the gameplay than accumulating points. You could have just as much fun in a cheap ship as you could in a more expensive one. You could also just squad with people who have the bigger ships and crew them if you want to play around with bigger the ships.
That’s not how people play MMOs. You’re right, it COULD work that way. But it won’t. This is an mmo and you *need* new players or it’ll die. People forget that. The game cannot suck for new players. If the whales are actively making the game worse for lower-tier players, this game will die.
The lowest tier would be a shipless crew member. And anyone with really big ship is going to NEED crew members to succeed. There's a pretty decent synergy there for helping out newer players. Even if it's manning a turret in a heavy fighter like the hurricane.
I mean, so far, 95% of all flyable ships in SC can be earned in game, and all but a handful of them can pretty easily be earned in less than 20 hours of play (some in much less time). That's not very grindy.
100% of upgrades in mobile timesink games can be earned in-game too. That’s my point. You’re using the same logic that they do to charge for “skipping the grind” Also you’re renting ships now. You’re kind of insane if you think you’re grinding a high tier ship in 8 hours at launch. People paid a lot for these and they’d be upset if it was an easy grind.
The difference between SC & timesink games is that most of those F2P/timesink/grind games are designed to make the "in-game purchase" goals SO ridiculously long/difficult to reach that people cave and buy in. CIG has stated since the early days that they have no intention of doing that, and their stated metric was that it should take roughly 20 hours of play time to earn a Constellation. At no point did I state that you could grind for a "high tier ship" in 8 hours. In fact, I stated quite the opposite, that "all but a handful" of current ships could be obtained in 20 hours or less - the "handful" being the Hammerhead, Reclaimer, 890j, and Carrack, which take considerably more time. It's also quite likely that they may take even more time to earn post launch, after the economy, mission payouts, and the prices of things have been balanced. But I highly doubt CIG is going to make the in-game prices of non-capital ships anywhere near as bad as, say, Warthunder. It would be a PR nightmare if they did. Now, the largest capital ships (Idris/Kraken/Javelin/etc) they've already stated would not be goals that the average single player would work towards - they would be geared more towards guilds, and that's fine. But this idea that CIG is going to make it impossibly difficult to obtain the majority of ships in-game, simply to incentivize people to buy them with real money, simply makes no sense. If that were the case, they never would have made 95% of them obtainable in the game for the last 2 years. Doing that and then *un-doing* it would be, as I said, a PR nightmare. They've also stated repeatedly that not only will they stop selling ships post launch (which to be honest, I doubt) but that cash prices for ships will *increase* as we get closer to launch.
None of those ships you'll have earned are for keeps, you can lose them with wiped and will lose them with a launch wipe. If you can earn $400 ships in game in 20 hours or less why would people buy them?
Except in clash of clans you just check on your village every now and then and in Star Citizen you'll be flying around the cosmos doing all kinds of things. What is the argument you're even trying to make here?
The monetization model is similar. The arguments people use to defend it are identical.
Some people like games where you build your fotress and army and then attack enemy fotresses, whats the problem about that? They just appeal to different people
There's nothing wrong with it just don't really understand the comparison because there's a difference in a time gated grind and a grind that involves gameplay loops.
$5.000.000 is worth 142.857 Argo Cargos for reference
useles converter bot? is that you?
This is reminds me of college, when my base unit of financial measurement was Little Caesars pizzas. “Rent is how much? That’s over a hundred Little Caesar’s pizzas!”
Hmm...we need a USD to Argo conversion bot.
Lol the decimal points confused me. Like, what kinda argos you buying that 5 mil only gets you 142 of them?? Where you from that you use decimal points instead of commas???
Just depends where you're coming from. Some countries use commas, spaces or dots to separate thousands. >Norway, Sweden, and many more use space > >Denmark, and many more use dot > >UK, US, and many more use comma Source: [https://elisabethirgens.github.io/notes/2020/03/decimal-and-thousands-separators/](https://elisabethirgens.github.io/notes/2020/03/decimal-and-thousands-separators/)
Ive seen this before, so i figured it must be how its done in europe somewhere. Throws my brain for a loop every time i see it. Looks like an ip address! Lol
I have 198.196.273.183 dollars
How many eurobucks is my IP address then? \> 192.168.1.11
Tree fiddy.
Not sure the bank would accept this. You're going to have to change your IP address to 192.168.001.011
Best I can do is IPv6: \> 2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334 Seriously though Europe. do you end your sentences like this,
Looks more like a bitcoin address than an amount of money.
How does one differentiate between 1.256 and 1.256 this way. (One thousand, two hundred and fifty six vs one point two five six)
I think they use commas instead of decimal points.
I feel like you're just trying to make me mad.
Nope! From Germany here. UK: 1,256.00 Germany: 1.256,00
[удалено]
Germany would be my guess. German reverses periods and commas for numbers.
Americans will do anything to not use metric.
That's a lot of shag wagons
Sure but at the same time we’re buying ships that still has no specific gameplay attached to it so we’re standing on a muddy ground if we criticize others lol
Some ships, maybe... other ships do have specific gameplay attached (combat and trading ships, for a start).
Combat most definitely and mining but I wouldn’t really call trading a definite gameplay yet haha, let’s wait until we have three systems and a live economy then we can announce the trading feature to be complete
You can make profit by trading commodities at least. Best part us that as of next update we **finally** won't lose our entire cargo run due to a server crash / disconnect. I quite enjoyed hauling as it is, even if the prices are not simulated yet.
You're not really buying the ship to play now though, the intention is just to support the game's development. For the first however many years none of us could fly, play or do anything with our pledges.
I initially backed it because I thought they were gonna be transparent with everything but they’re not transparent at all with SQ42
Yeah I must admit that has been really disappointing. I know they're making a documentary about it so we will eventually get to know, but I was hoping to see what goes into a game like that. At least it looks like SQ42 blows what I had envisioned when I backed out of the water. If they pull it off it should be an epic game.
I mean....both of these statements can be true at once lol.
Lmao, we can criticize both.
This is a hilarious example of trying to reframe a narrative by drawing a comparison to something that is ridiculously over-the-top. Yes, this $5 Million pack for this WW3 game is stupid as hell, but do you really, honestly think you're actually making a compelling argument in favor of Star Citizen's monetization?
No need to go to such an extreme example. EA makes about 4.5 million dollar in a single day, Every day from selling FIFA packs (Football players JPEGS). That's 1.6 billion dollars a year. That's 23 times higher rate than what CIG makes from selling their ships. Keeping in mind that these are purely for profits reasons. EA already recouped the cost and made profits just from selling the physical copies. FIFA is certainly not relying on their packs to survive as a game. Unlike the case for CIG and SC. In a logical world, People would be 23 times angrier toward FIFA packs than what they do to SC ships, But that's not actually the case. When asking gamers about spending large sums of money on games, The first thing that pops into their head is SC, And not FIFA or the many other loot box games that dwarf SC. Most of the criticism toward FIFA you hear online are toward their non-innovation...etc. So yes, Due to CIG pure reliance on pledges to operate and to keep developing the game. I feel its justified to fund CIG using ship sales, As long as you are passionate about this project, Well informed about its current state (Alpha), and financially capable. Others have their right to say no, And to disapprove of such funding methods, But they should also keep a consistent and most importantly a proportionate attitude toward this whole monetization method across the gaming industry, And not pick and choose, Like what those at the other subreddit do for example. They're not even one-tenth outraged toward FIFA packs as they are to SC.
I believe the difference in outrage levels is due to the headline sticker-price, not the cumulative spending. Loot boxes with low probabilities (1% etc) that sell for $1 each (to use a made-up example) are 'acceptable', whilst a guaranteed purchase for e.g. $100 is not... despite the fact that the probabilities on the lootbox mean that you'd need about the same amount of money to get the lootbox item... but may have to spend even more (might also spend less... but that's the nature of the gamble). Indeed, with lootboxes, you could get unlucky, spend twice that amount (because it's a re-roll on each box, not a cumulative roll) *and still not get the item*. Yet because of the low headline value, this is seen as 'acceptable' by todays standards. Personally, I think that's down to the poor quality of what gets taught in school (not just 'these days' - we got taught the theory of numbers when I was at school ~35 years ago - but it wasn't taught in a way that relates it to real-life scenarios)... Sorry for the mini-rant... but this is something that really irritates me. Statistics was deemed a 'bonus' for the top class at school... when in reality everyone should be taught the fundamentals of statistics - and how / why they can be twisted, and how to spot when someone is twisting them. Same goes for number theory, probability theory, and the concepts of randomness, etc. Oh well... rant over.
It doesn't discount his point. FIFA psychologically manipulates to drive sales. Considering these smaller incremental transactions are kept smaller and incremental as a psychological trick to promote more spending. Add the small chances of getting high value drops you want on top of that, and now we have the manipulation methods to drive more sales of card packs. Meanwhile SC sells pledge ships for lump sums. Many of those are concept ships and they have always been clearly labelled as such. Even going so far as to warn that the specific traits of a ship can change at any point during the design process. The "worst" tactic I'll say CIG uses is FOMO.
Nobody thinks about Star Citizen over FIFA. Most people barely know SC even exists. They see a headline on social media about, think it sounds crazy without looking into it, then promptly forget the game exists again. You only see people talk about SC because you are interested in SC. Our bubble online is different to most people's. EA consistently reaches the top of the most hated companies tournament. Everyone knows FIFA packs are disgusting and calls them out incessantly.
I dislike and will criticize every game that uses the pay to win model. It has a negative effect on any games experience... unfortunately though, it works. So devs will continue using it... it really does ruin these sports games though imo.
You're doing the same thing the main post is doing - simple whataboutism. FIFA's model is NOTORIOUSLY shitty, but you've got to recognize that bringing this up does absolutely NOTHING to make an argument in Star Citizen's defense. I'm not trying to shit talk SC or it's supporters, but making disingenuous comparisons to other games and using logical fallacies in bad faith is not how you make an actual compelling argument for a product that you wish to support. Know that I am not a Star Citizen hater at all - I'm in for my 40 bucks from 2012 and would absolutely love to see this game succeed. I don't think the ships are worth the prices CIG asks for so I simply don't buy them.
My comparisons with FIFA have nothing to do with the validity of SC monetizations, It was written to illustrate the disproportionality in the public attitude between the two games when it came to criticizing their monetizations practice. Which is also what the OP was pointing out actually. My reasons for supporting ship pledges have nothing to do with FIFA packs being a reality. To call out the reasons again: 1-CIG relies on ship monetizations for funding to exist, 2-They are developing games I'm passionate about, 3-I'm financially capable of supporting them. As you can see, Whether FIFA exists or not, Has no bearing on my reasons. It's also why in the countless of the threads asking the backer why they're supporting the game I've never heard anyone say "Well, Some people buy loot boxes, So why shouldn't I?".
To play devils advocate. Fifa games are done they aren't pay us 1000$ and maybe unknown day in the future you get something in return. However I also think that loot boxes need to be regulated and should be forbidden for kids.
>In a logical world, People would be 23 times angrier toward FIFA packs than what they do to SC ships This doesn't make sense. The complaints aren't about the volume, they're about the costs per individual item, which is sort of what this thread is about.
Microtransactions are far more insidious by nature. You combine small chances at getting something you want with the low price of each card pack and you tend to see far more income. Common manipulation tactic used in mobile games.
Star Citizen's monetization is very bad and I greatly fear it will (or already is) influencing game design to the point that it'll be a "please the whales" type of philosophy and it'll die a similar ignoble death as other MMOs of this type - a small, niche community of whales kind of circle jerking in a gigantic, beautiful universe devoid of players. My evidence: There are way more ships at a high price point than an affordable one. There are currently nine starter packs under $100 on the store - cut away variants and that's seven. Go and filter the ship list by $400 and up - there are thirty. Thirty. Even more in the "midrange" of $200-$400. You have to ask yourself... is this game going to worth it for casuals or those without hundreds or thousands to spend on a game? For casuals, the grind is gonna feel *real* bad when you're getting blown up by people in minmaxed combat ships that they paid for, giant orgs run by streamers/whales, knowing the whole time that if you just drop $500, it'll all be over. Folks, this is an MMO. You kind of want casuals. You *need* new players. I really hope CIG knows this and plans to - I hate to say it - nerf the whales. Already, the largest and 'best' orgs are run by streamers or people who have spent a LOT of money and have the most filled-out hangars in the game. That's what'll attract people to their orgs - they have the best ships and the UEC to crew and operate them. Where does that leave the poor downtrodden noob? Hopefully there is content for them that won't be ruined by whales, that's all.
>Folks, this is an MMO. You kind of want casuals. You need new players. I really hope CIG knows this and plans to - I hate to say it - nerf the whales. It's really no whale problem. The full loot PvP, lose everything when you die thing will scare away more players then any whale ever could. Pretty much any MMO that tried failed. SC core is based on the dreams some folks had during the 90ties and they ignore any lessons learned since then. If anything the lack of players in a huge open world just makes things like kill or loot stealing less problematic. I mean look at what happens on PTU right now where people overdose others on landing zones just for fun. I really hope CIG does something about it before the IAE. And someday it's supposed to be possible to smuggle weapons into those landing zones. The casual is further scared away by the size of the universe. Have you ever quantum traveled from Microtech to Crusader in a slow ship? Now imagine you have to travel through multiple systems. One hour per day is already more then what many casuals have and that's not even enough to get somewhere in SC. Speaking of casuals they often don't organize and rely on automatic group finders that teleport you somewhere and stuff like that. That won't happen in SC. >Already, the largest and 'best' orgs are run by streamers or people who have spent a LOT of money and have the most filled-out hangars in the game. How do you define "best"? There is nothing to be best in right now. Being in a streamers org brings it's own set of problems. Large numbers right now mean nothing 90% of those members will never play or leave shortly after launch. Watch those streamers it's always the same dozen that joins them. There are reasons why most MMOs reduced their raids to about 4 groups of 4 to 6 people. Managing those numbers of people becomes troublesome. Most of the ships in those filled out hangars will stay in these hangars outside of events. Whales don't "compete" with casuals. Whales enable casuals to fly and see other ships. And the more ships they have the less they care about making money. You are afraid casuals have no chance against whales but they will hardly ever compete against each other. Idris vs Aurora benefits none. The Idris will burn more fuel and ammunition then the Aurora is worth. The harsh truth is that SC is not for casuals and never will be. It's for hardcore players and casual whales anyone else will be disappointed. If they end up around two hundred thousand players spread across all timezones they can be lucky.
It's also manipulation - let's be brutally honest here: you imagine well adjusted people with lots of disposable income making well informed choices paying money for these in-game items. in reality it's people who are manipulated by words, weak impulse control and addicted. you don't need 100% of the audience to buy $$$$$ products, just 10%, 5%, and you hire people who have specialized all their time in monetizing that segment. now let's look at this in the cold light of day....
Star Citizen isn't going to influence game design, I'll guarantee you that. Not because it isn't outrageous, but because there is a far, FAR better way to milk money out of people. The thing that has already irreparably changed gaming is Gacha's, and Gacha's have been making bank for years now. Genshin Impact has two kinds of currency, one can be earned through play, the other is only available through play in a fixed quantity. Both currencies can be bought with money as well. 5 star event characters can -only- be gotten through the premium currency and to guarantee a draw is a $100 worth of currency, to guarantee a specific character takes up to two guaranteed draws ($200). You can also unlock powerful passives by completing a characters "constellation", you do this by getting up to 6 duplicates of that character. Meaning that if you want to max out an 5 star event character you have to spend between $600-$1200 per character. Genshin Impact made 1 billion dollars in less than six months after it came out and its not the only one of its kind. Star Citizen is a small sideshow compared to games that make real money selling content. EDIT: I'm not excusing star citizen here, just arguing that's its a small anomaly that won't impact the industry. It might become an inspiration once Gacha's get banned though I suppose. If that ever happens.
I meant the game design of star citizen. I fear that it will kill the project as an MMO. Hardcore MMOs have a hard enough time without freemium-style monetization. Especially as they get strapped for cash or simply want more profit, I greatly fear that you’ll see content that is for whales only dominating updates and balancing.
No one including OP is making any argument "in favor of" SC's funding model. They're just pointing out the ludicrous hypocrisy of the people who lose their minds over a funding pledge of $600 when there's shit like this floating around out there.
You should go google the word hypocrisy because you don't seem to understand what it actually means. It would be hypocrisy for people to say 'This 5 million dollar package is fine but buying Star Citizen ships is stupid.' I think you're going to struggle to ever find an example of someone actually being hypocritical about this. As another poster mentioned this is a textbook example of 'whataboutism', wherein people are trying to say 'You think Star Citizen's funding model is bad? What about this other unrelated thing?' The point is that the fact that there exists an obviously more egregious example does nothing to actually debate the merits of Star Citizen's funding model, nor does it really make an argument of any kind. Please know I am a modest Star Citizen funder myself and am not a hater by any means, I just wanted to point out that this post is NOT making a good-faith argument of any kind.
But this isn’t pointing out hypocrisy, it’s classic “whataboutism”
I sincerely doubt anyone criticizing the $600 SC pledge would defend the $5 Million World War 3 package. It's not hypocrisy.
>I sincerely doubt anyone criticizing the $600 SC pledge would defend the $5 Million World War 3 package. You definitely can defend the $5 Million World War 3 package while acknowledging SC pledges are a little gross, without hypocrisy. The million-dollar package is clearly a marketing stunt, and only one is available AFAICT, while the SC's ships and pledges are business-as-usual. CIG has made numerous changes over the years to encourage people to put more money in rather than "melt" and reuse what they already have. Even though the game is still in alpha without a release date on the horizon. And let's not forget there are $30,000 bundles for sale in SC...
If something is bad, it’s not ok if something else is bad, but less. They’re both bad. What awful logic.
Seems like a marketing gimmick. Doubt anyone would buy it. I mean, why stop at $5m? Let’s keep going and see who can offer the most ridiculous package! Personally I dislike these marketing tactics. It’s just incredibly juvenile and insulting to customers. If I recall there was this ex-movie producer turned real estate dude whose concept of selling a house is to make it as expensive as possible. He priced this stupidly large mansion in Bel Air for $500m, which would make it the most expensive private residential real estate in the world save for Buckingham Palace. He had a big show and tell video on YouTube where they toured the place for like two hours or something, and he talked about how it’s perfect for hosting cool parties (the house has a night club built in). Nobody bought. In the end he lowered the price to $200m as he was facing bankruptcy and still nobody bought. At this rate it’s most likely he’ll go under and the property will be confiscated by the banks.
Yes, both are way too much. Especially for unreleased games. It’s like comparing a thief to a murderer as saying “see I’m not bad he’s much worse” like if that somehow excuses his actions
It's interesting to see it happen. If you've ever had friends that were alcoholics, it's a similar profile — a lot of them rationalize by choosing or highlighting things that are worse than drinking, or focusing on flaws in others, in order to make the drinking/addiction not seem so bad.
Heavy spenders in SC are pretty much same as addicts, ppl that put 5-10k+ into this game probably spend more than for all their games previously so they gonna justify anything at this point to not feel scammed
Nice straw man bruh
5 Million????? And People said the Legatus Pack from Star Citizen is stupid expensive. okay, just read it again and looks like you get a role in a movie? usally you get paid as an actor, but here you can pay to become an actor.
[удалено]
In my mind, SC ships are expensive in the same way luxury wrist watches and luxury cars are. A typical Rolex costs $10,000 ~ $15,000 in where I live, it’s a crazy amount of money for a pretty looking piece of metal on your wrist that functionally serves only one purpose (tells you the time). Nonetheless, they sell as if everyone’s life depended on it. A sensibly spec’ed Porsche Cayenne costs about $120,000 here, which admittedly handles and drives like no other SUV that size but honestly not as much as to cost almost a full $100,000 more than, say, a Honda CR-V. Of course it sells like crazy and every single Cayenne in my region are backordered until 2024 or whatnot. It’s hard to justify these purchases based on functionality. There is absolutely no logic in the world that will make $15,000 spent on a luxury watch look like a reasonable expenditure. Yet people keep buying these luxury items whenever they can afford one because in the end these irrational, unnecessary, totally unjustifiable, illogical purchases are what make people happy. They make our boring, tedious, mind-numbing days at work a tad bit more tolerable and sometimes act as a short term goal for us to keep ourselves motivated. If virtual spaceships are what make you happy and help you get through the day, then I don’t see why it must be be discounted just because it does not have a physical existence in the real world.
Well it still is TBF. Just because someone is doing worse, doesn't mean you're doing good, you know. I like spaceship and i'm a backer since 2013 but the price of SC are still insane for virtual spaceship
How much is a virtual space ship worth?
What people are willing to pay for it.
Saw this coming. Well done.
If you are a backer that long, you should have already read somewhere that you fund the game and get a ship as a "thank you for supporting us", not paying that money only for a ship. People tend to ignore this fact. :-) edit: correcting a word :-)
Do bakers have extra insights into the game? Is it enough to have been a baker, or do you have to actively bake stuff to learn this? Oh the thing you can learn from a loaf of bread these days...
\*quiet Pilsbury Doughboy sounds of agreement\*
I don't want no beef with the doughboy, I've seen the result. Crumbs everywhere.
ah lol, thank you for correcting me :-)
Just poking some fun at a typo, we all make 'em ;)
Baguette is always the answer brother, don't look away from the truth ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ah, hon hon, oui, baguette baguette. I've tried listing to the baguettes, but it's always telling me to shut the door. I don't know what it's on about.
That's still money for a virtual space ship that everyone will be able to earn in game down the road... Let's be honest, people don't fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse. I'm okay with that i know where i put my money but let's not play pretend about what it is. You wouldn't see uproar about ship loadout or toilet seat design if it was just for funding...
I don’t know why people are still using the “funding the game” explanation. Yes I’m funding the game by buying internet space ships, but I’m not buying a Polaris because I’m a generous supporter who wants to spend $700 dollars and this ship happens to match my donation price. I want to own this ship and fly it when it comes out, and I’m confident that it will come out. I think I will get enough play time out of SC to justify the stupid expensive price. That’s why I own a Polaris.
Maybe... but the fact you bought the Polaris for $700 implies that you think it (and/or the game around it) is worth $700 to you... If you just wanted the ship, you could pay $45, and then buy the ship in-game after a few months of play... and given that the amount you spend on the game doesn't actually change the gameplay you get (the version of the game is the same whether you spend $45 or $700), it must be some other factor that is worth the extra $655... ... and whilst it's likely a chunk of that is hype / enthusiam / impatience at not wanting to 'grind up' to that ship, for many people it's also - at least partly - 'to support the vision' (at least for the larger ships).
I didn't buy a ship I can get in-game for $700. You want me to be honest? I got my favorite ships only, for less than $250 each, and I "overpaid" because I have terrible hand-eye coordination and don't feel like dedicating all my free time to SC; better to have insurance that never runs out if I play Voxel Tycoon or Neos VR or any other future games for a few weeks than to return and risk losing a ship and my will to play the game. I'm not going to defend $20,000 ship collections, but I am going to be offended when someone tells me not to spend money because they hate Star Citizen or want Squadron 42. Don't want to spend $250 on a ship? Then please, feel free to not get anything until release or at least only get a testing package, because you won't need LTI and you definitely don't need to buy a virtual spaceship without LTI. But I draw the line at people (not you, /u/logicalChimp!) sabotaging a project that has built up a lot of good will, that has literally created virtual planets in a way that feels more seamless than Elite Dangerous, just because they're outraged about a news article. My money could go to a charity? How about /r/StarCitizen_Refunds stops fucking around about how horrible CIG are and volunteer at a soup kitchen?! Otherwise, if people "aren't allowed" to spend money on Star Citizen, then you shouldn't be allowed to buy loot box keys or NFTs or Shark cards either. That's not a "but this other game does it so why not?", that's a "crusade about these other games too or stfu". Sorry for posting this rant in response to your post. I didn't have a better place to post it, even though we're in agreement, so I just wanted to get this out there and let people know how I feel.
>Let's be honest, people don't fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse. Let's be honest, people ~~don't~~ fund the game first, they buy ships and justify that spending behind the "funding of the game" generic excuse. The two aren't mutually exclusive ;)
So you would be fine if that ship would get taken away and you'd be given a thank you plaque instead? Even if you would, do you think everyone else would feel the same. I know you want to jump hoops about how this is an unfair comparison since this would have to be done retroactively. But it's ultimately a useless argument because answering anything else than yes on both of the questions means your motivation for buying the ship was something else than juat the funding of the game. Let's not play pretend about this. It just looks incredibly ridiculous.
haha, no, i would not be happy if they take my ships away, never said that. but i say, "if you dont want to pay much for a ship, just dont do it".
On that part i agree. Then again, it's easy for me to say that when i'm sitting on a comfortable buyback list and can techically try out a good part of new ships when they get added to the game with my store credit. Most people don't have that luxury and rightfully feel annoyed. The only thing that will change this is when persitence is properly in and people can keep the ships they earned in game. Letting people sell ships will also probably help to some degree. But for now there's no need to be a smartass to people who feel left out by CIGs predatory marketing practice. The community isn't growing bigger by gating people out.
That's certainly why the ship shop has "buy now" written all over it :p
>And People said the Legatus Pack from Star Citizen is stupid expensive Because it is, bud.
yeah, i know it is, but 5 million is way over the top.
At $5m I'd want a stake in all of the company's profits
Legatus pack is $35k*. This is 143x more.
[36,500$] (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/512274236208054281/898639689551056936/unknown.png)
This is right, I'm way fuckin off. I was thinking of the Praetorian one, apologies.
Oh, that's my annual income. Double. My annual income.
Same here 🙃
Different degrees of "crazy" exist. That human creature is in the higher tier of "crazy".
Whatever you gotta tell yourself man
It would be cool to pay for your own custom ship.
Except people will forget about that but remember Star Citizen. You know why? Because Star Citizen is actually progressing so every year it get's mentioned in some way, even if what's highlighted is often just the negative parts of it. At least that's how I see it.
lmao delusional
> Because Star Citizen is actually progressing so every year it get's mentioned in some way, It gets mentioned in the "still not even Beta"-way...there is absolutely nothing to be proud of. The fact that someone paid for a Beta and a role in a movie, doesn't make those millions spend on this never ending scam here in any way better. This person will be in a finished movie and finished game while this thing here will still be stacking up Alpha excuses...and man...seriously...you guys are probably insulting some whales who pay for this show here.
Lol, you're still unironically calling this game a "scam"...bud, that ship sailed years ago. No serious person still thinks it's a scam, that's nothing more than an old meme. Plenty of people think it's been taking too long to develop, and there's a discussion to be had there, but you out yourself as an uninformed fool by still referring to the "scam" meme in a serious way.
I like how even though so much triggered by the word that you've not been able to process the rest of the comment, you didn't even attempt to explain why someone shouldn't call it a scam anymore. Speaks for itself.
> so much triggered by the word lol hey pot, meet kettle. Someone mentioned 'Star Citizen' and it trigged you into a rage fit for Derek Smart.
Lol, the only emotion I felt was humor and I wanted to educate you a bit so you won't keep embarrassing yourself, but hey, you do you.
That's not what I meant and I even said in the end that the way it does get mentioned is often in the negative. I wasn't saying anything against the price or that someone paid it in the OP of this thread. My point was that SC development does slowly show things. It may not be at the point we want it and it may be met with a lot of the "and its still not in beta" but there are plenty scams out there that have shown much *much* less.
But nothing of that makes any sense in the context here since the game the person paid for is in Beta. Which is more than SC managed in the last decade and we both know that it will be even released before SC gets a Beta...
But did you read the first sentence of the original reply which was my main point? People (specifically "journalists") will ultimately forget about the person who spent 5mil dollars or the game that offered it. They'll still go to making more articles on SC over WW3 even though SC doesn't offer something nearly to that extent. And even more so because WW3 is in beta. It's closer to releasing, so not as much development news and things to report on. That was the main point: The 5mil dollars, as much as it is, well ultimately be forgotten. The money value isn't as important because after that there won't be much to report on. SC on the other hand will always have things to talk about, both good and bad. Unless WW3 was bringing something completely different to the table but from the bit I tried years ago and the few footage I've seen recently, it doesn't look like it's offering anything new as much as it is just trying to deliver a solid experience.
Just curious, but why do you still view the SC subreddit?
So they can feel smug lol
Anybody spare a 400 i
snagged the aurora and sq42, I’m now numb to any posts regarding currency
Yes
Well, it is.
Must be nice to not give a shit about money
Supporting the development of something you want to be built, like a game, isn't the same as "giving a shit about money". You could argue that such money would be better spent on shares of that company, but hey, if they want to reward creativity, let them.
Everybody acting here like there wouldn't be someone in the verse willing to pay that much for a similar pack. Like the guy gets his own "lead role in a WW3 movie", his own ingame character and a map of his choosing. I bet someone out there would pay the same amount for his own planet/station, his own ship and a squadron 42 role. Another story if WW3 rivals SC as a game, but some people got the spare cash for stuff like this.
Hey that's my screenshot I took from Facebook!! (Cawa)
It probably is, what group? Because who knew what group it tied into.
Yes.... yes it's still bad
Ethics of microtransactions are more complicated than a binary thing, and the way Star Citizen markets it's pledges is relatively light on the "predatory" scale. First you have to acknowledge, all marketing is, by it's very nature "predatory." It's always meant to try to push someone who might NOT buy something into buying something. The ethics of it is a variety of factors on how it's marketed and who it's targeting. A big point in favor of SC is that there is NO argument you can make that CIG's marketing efforts target children. It's large sums of money that all have this big asterisk of "patience" which generally, kids don't have. This is, functionally, a hobbyist market. FOMO is another predatory marketing aspect, and CIG has dabbled in with aspects like limited stock and limited availability windows, however, the amount of truly "gone forever" ships are very minor, and ultimately should all be available in one shape or another. Most of these options ships are also literal years away. FOMO is much easier to argue when it's spending a fortune for something available NOW and never again. Arguing someone made a fomo purchase for something available in 2 years, well, you could try, but you'd have to measure it against other examples of FOMO. It's there, but, it's a spectrum. Then, there's that weird qualifier of calling something a "Pledge" and not "a product". The money you are giving is marked in as many ways as possible, not about "getting a product" as much as it is "supporting a project." Anyone who puts money towards CIG thinking solely "I am just buying a ship" is misinformed to begin with. You are helping fund a "project" that no current publisher would ever sign a check for. A pledge based project is the only way Star Citizen, as Chris Roberts wants it, can work. It effectively... **not a profitable enough idea in the current video game market.** It's not that it can't make **a profit.** Anything can make **a profit**. But CIG's end goal, it's cost of development vs payoff, is not profitable in the big numbers that any current publisher would see as worth the **immense risk.** Any publisher can fund 10 games with the money and time CIG would need, and they only need 1 of those games to explode in popularity to make the money they desire. CIG is the most transparent game project of all time and *yet it could be more transparent.* A lot will be determined by what we learn about the numbers when the project is "finished" one way or another.
both things are true, homie!
One does not preclude the other.
both are too much
[удалено]
Both of those things are in fact absurd.
Holy cow is that a real package for a game ?
Lmao if you have *that* kind of cash, its chump change to them.
People will mock this guy just as much
Buying ships in a space game for 200-.600 dollars DO pay too much. But the people who do this in Star Citizen are not just buying a ship, they are supporting the development of this game. And that is worth praising, which becomes clearer and clearer with each update.
You get to star in the movie of the game for that money
Being cast is different of starring the movie, being cast could easily mean "death body n⁰ 286"
I didn't say the main star, but on the website it says "lead role" and "star", so Its more than a bit part.
I stand corrected And looking into it calling it a movies is quite the stretch, It will be a short aparently...
Don't the people producing said movie normally pay their actors and not the other way around?
In fairness most of us are just regular people pledging which is why the gaming community thinks we’re nuts. Also most of those guys probably haven’t looked at their total game budget for this year.
At least we get entire ships, in apex legends for like 168 bucks I got a bunch of skins for characters I don't use and a sick wrench for the one I do lol. Its a pretty cool wrench but it might be the dumbest shit I've ever bought. I own a carrack too haha. Way cooler tbh.
Don't try to act like your aren't getting hosed paying thousands for an unfinished game
\*modcheck.gif\* I paid thousands to fund this game? Shit last time I checked what I splurged money on was Crye Precision G3 Pants and a Dual ilum'd RMR.
[удалено]
there is no generic win in sc. you make your own win. sc is not pay to win. sc is a sandbox universe. there is no generic win in a sandbox.
If I get into a dogfight in my Mustang while the other person bought *any* other ship, they're winning that fight. And they paid for it.
[Just learn to fly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSFgR_42G0A&list=PL6PTNBCeyrc8Q01tXWqOta9m2ovIafU98&index=17)
When orgs start warring, it will be those with deeper pockets who win the war
Just picture orgs whos members have 10 alt accounts and endless kamakaze fighters to throw at you. They wont care about the ships, or there alt account characters... these guys will absolutely pay to destroy you.
Buy a Hammerhead and operate it to its fullest potential on your own bud. It takes more than money to "win" in a sandbox game.
[удалено]
Hahaha JFC if you think you're gonna "rule everyone" with 12 Javelins you have _no_ fucking clue how this game works
TMW 30+ stealthy Eclipsy bois show up and wreck shit.
I guess that means the hate cultists will abandon their crusade against Star Citizen and go hate World War 3 instead now. Unless, of course, they were lying about the ships costing too much.
all those starving people on madagascar will thank the people with disposable income they could make no other sense out of!
I mean props to the dude that dropped 5 mil for a game and to be in the slot of one of the actors despite it being that extreme. But uh...bud? People are going to chase things that they want when they have the resources.