Star Citizen: Chris Robert`s new space sim (the Wing Commander guy)

[Red Storm]

Cool looking ship, but I've already got a Hornet (and enough ships anyway) so I won't be buying one. Will eventually try to get one in-game of course.

 

[SithSolo1]

That early of a backer should have alpha access included so no you don't need the arena commander pass. I'm surprised you aren't already in it as I guess they've opened it to an even smaller pool than I originally thought. I'm backer # 7359.

I have seen a few cases where early backers have sold/traded all of their LTI packages for profit and got non-LTI versions of what they had, some of those required arena passes to access the module.

As a rule of thumb: All LTI game packages have access because LTI was cut off before alpha slots ran out. If you have one on your account, you do not need the arena pass. If you have a non-LTI game package it should say in the contents whether it includes alpha and beta or just beta. If it only says beta you will need the pass.


I also believe multiplayer is open up to backer # 200,000 now, as long as you have alpha access or the pass.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I was trying the wrong game mode, oops

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Since I'm playing solely E: D at the moment (won't touch SC until we get configurable controls, sensitivity adjustments, and a tuned up flight model), I resign myself to trolling for information. This video is a purty showcase of some planetary environments (specifically Arclight's planet purchase in Stanton):
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14039-Inside-CIG-Planetside-Art-Review

 

[Fallen Kell]

So with Crytek falling apart, how much will this affect SC?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I'm going to assume not at all. I'd wager even if crytech folds somebody will purchase the game engine. Hell maybe Chris will buy it or even get some stupidly cheap licensing scheme.

 

[rivethead]

Chris has already bought it. Yes, CIG bought they Cryengine 3 game code, not just a license. There is talk on the RSI boards that CIG guys already know more about parts of the Cryengine 3 code than Crytek does.....but that stuff is beyond my comprehension.

Bottom line is: there shouldn't be an impact. If anything CIG could pick up a few of the US developers who decide not to relocate to Germany....

 

[flexy]

I really, really don't want to troll...but I just saw the RSI website and I am just appalled. I have never seen a bigger money-grab than that.

It seems you need to pay for everything in that game.

Game, ship(s), subscriptions, add-ons..EVERYTHING.

And of course the "good stuff" in the game costs top dollar.

Just from looking at that I am almost sure I pass. I have no desire to play a game where it seems it's a game mainly about who's wallet is bigger, where those who can afford the best ship and most addons "win".

You can call me trolling now or whatever, but their website is very clear what this game is about. (The very first page when you go on the site is a presentation of a ship with a "buy button" underneath...lol)

 

[BrightCandle]

Its based solidly on pay to win. Supposedly when the game releases it won't be micro transaction based (although I would call any of star citizens prices micro!) bit as it stands you can pay more money to them and get a bigger starting advantage.

 

[Red Storm]

I guess if your definition of "winning" is having the most ships...

 

[flexy]

I guess if your definition of "winning" is having the most ships...

As I understand (and I know very little of SC), he is planning a HUGE virtual world with basically everything imaginable possible in the game.

SO FAR, SO GOOD.

But if those things, and this of course including what you own, your ships, home, even "private islands" etc...is based on WALLET SIZE...then I don't see anything appealing about this. The concept of "achievement" or "advantage" in this game seems to be equal to what you're willing to pay.

Sorry that I am still from a time where you actually got an advantage by doing something in a game. I thought I have seen everything in terms of "pay to win" when I was playing D3 before the major changes....but I was obviously wrong.

 

[KentState]

I really, really don't want to troll...but I just saw the RSI website and I am just appalled. I have never seen a bigger money-grab than that.

It seems you need to pay for everything in that game.

Game, ship(s), subscriptions, add-ons..EVERYTHING.

And of course the "good stuff" in the game costs top dollar.

Just from looking at that I am almost sure I pass. I have no desire to play a game where it seems it's a game mainly about who's wallet is bigger, where those who can afford the best ship and most addons "win".

You can call me trolling now or whatever, but their website is very clear what this game is about. (The very first page when you go on the site is a presentation of a ship with a "buy button" underneath...lol)

I think the important distinction is that the "game" currently doesn't exists and is being crowd funded. This is why there is such a major focus on money. When the game releases, it will be a complete product.

 

[BrightCandle]

I seem to recall he Chris said that it would take about 80 hours of gameplay to work your way up to the current top ship you can buy. He also said it didn't matter as much because the gear you attached to your ship was more more important to its capabilities. Of course cutting 80 hours of gameplay to get to a much more capable ship is not insignificant, the only way to compete with that is to play 80 more hours than the other guy so you can buy the ship in game and pay for all the upgrades as well.

This game for the purposes of funding is defnitely following a pay 2 win model even though its not F2P. I have always disliked the games funding model and everything Chris has said about how much that matters suggests its going to be a significant advantage.

 

[SithSolo1]

As far as I understand it most of what people see as "pay-to-win" atm is a reward for funding the game before release.

The earliest backers:
Received a ship with a game package purchase
Had access to ships that have never been sold again
Were given larger cash discounts than current pricing
Were given Life Time Insurance on all purchases
Can buy up to 25k in-game credits a week, up to a total of 150k

The current set of backers:
Receives a ship with a game package purchase
Has access to some sales of limited ships
Pay more per ship/package than earlier backers
Have Life Time Insurance replaced with Limited time insurance
Can buy up to 25k in-game credits a week, up to a total of 150k

The plan afaik once the final game launches:
No longer receive a ship with a game purchase (no more ship packages)
No more ship sales on the site period, limited or otherwise
Will pay more for the game itself
Can buy up to 25k in-game credits a week, up to a total of 150k

So imho, what most people are seeing as pay-to-win I see as a perk for throwing money into a game that started from nothing and may or may not see the light of day. I hope it will but nothing is guaranteed. As soon as the game launches, the "pay-to-win" aspect goes out the window.


As far as buying credits to win, have you seen the credit store pricing? The stuff you can buy in there atm is akin to white quality vendor goods in WoW.

I've got an Aurora LN, a high-end version of the most basic ship you can buy. It has 4 Bulldog repeaters and a missile rack. The 4 repeaters along are 32k credits. If the missile rack were in the store it'd be somewhere in the 15-20k range. So lets say 50k just to load the ship with weapons. 150k credits isn't going to buy you a ship but it may make a dent in the purchase of a basic one or allow you to buy one or two pretty good items for your current vessel.

 

[BrightCandle]

So early backers got to pay to win and later backers get to pay to win less. Eventually what will happen is people wont be able to pay to win at all, it simply wont be offered to them at all. Isn't that even worse than the usual P2W schemes? Sure feels worse to me. It might be how they chose to fund the game but it also means there are going to be a million or more players who paid money to get better starting equipment, sometimes significantly more. Just because it was a funding strategy doesn't mean it isn't pay 2 win, it quite clearly is.

 

[datalink7]

Except that there really isn't any winning in this game in the traditional sense, so you can't buy it.

 

[BrightCandle]

Seeing as how they is competitive PvP in arena and other elements of competitive play including unexplored regions and open world PvP it does seem like there is an advantage to buying a better ship. You can't win WoW either, doesn't mean that paying to win wouldn't be enormously detrimental to the game and its community. Pay to win might entice the people who paid to play more but those that didn't rapidly leave when they find they can't compete, which is made doubly worse that they can't even pay to compete because it was a limited offer.

Its a bad thing how Star citizen has funded itself, a really really bad thing that is going to cause balance issues within the game.

 

[SunnyD]

Its a bad thing how Star citizen has funded itself, a really really bad thing that is going to cause balance issues within the game.

The only balance issues in the case you try to make is if people are trying to play a role with a type of ship that's not inherently designed for that role. And that has absolutely nothing to do with pay to win. That has everything to do with common sense.

 

[datalink7]

There's nothing to balance. I still think you aren't understanding the game mechanics correctly.

It is less pay to win and more pay to skip content. If you don't have a good ship, you won't go exploring the more dangerous sectors but you'll be safe in the "beginning" areas. It won't matter that someone has a Retaliator and you only have the starting ship. You won't ever be fighting that person. You won't be competing with that person.

Edit: I should say, there's nothing to balance in the manner to which you are speaking to. Of course there are things to balance in other ways.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

As I understand (and I know very little of SC), he is planning a HUGE virtual world with basically everything imaginable possible in the game.

SO FAR, SO GOOD.

But if those things, and this of course including what you own, your ships, home, even "private islands" etc...is based on WALLET SIZE...then I don't see anything appealing about this. The concept of "achievement" or "advantage" in this game seems to be equal to what you're willing to pay.

Sorry that I am still from a time where you actually got an advantage by doing something in a game. I thought I have seen everything in terms of "pay to win" when I was playing D3 before the major changes....but I was obviously wrong.

It's not based on wallet size. You can purchase everything in game, there are no "pay to win" mechanisms.

Its based solidly on pay to win. Supposedly when the game releases it won't be micro transaction based (although I would call any of star citizens prices micro!) bit as it stands you can pay more money to them and get a bigger starting advantage.

We have no idea where the current ships stand in relation to each other, nor how much game time is needed to obtain said ships. Additionally, there are multiple better ships at specific roles than what have been offered for backers (the F8 is better than the best Hornet, for example). Not even close to "pay to win", sorry.

I really, really don't want to troll...but I just saw the RSI website and I am just appalled. I have never seen a bigger money-grab than that.

It seems you need to pay for everything in that game.

Game, ship(s), subscriptions, add-ons..EVERYTHING.

And of course the "good stuff" in the game costs top dollar.

Just from looking at that I am almost sure I pass. I have no desire to play a game where it seems it's a game mainly about who's wallet is bigger, where those who can afford the best ship and most addons "win".

You can call me trolling now or whatever, but their website is very clear what this game is about. (The very first page when you go on the site is a presentation of a ship with a "buy button" underneath...lol)

We have no final in-game prices yet, nor do we have final balance. Your "good stuff" costing "top dollar" is a load of bunk, much like the rest of your post.

The game is in active fund raising mode, and you get a reward for providing funds for development as a result, something to reward the financial "risk".

Everything in game requires in-game money, what else would you expect? However, you most certainly can not use real world money to obtain everything in-game.

Trollin, most def At least take the time to do a bit of research before making silly assumptions.

 

[flexy]

It's not based on wallet size. You can
The game is in active fund raising mode, and you get a reward for providing funds for development as a result, something to reward the financial "risk".

Semantics, or let me say "smart" use of words....

That game has long reached it's funding goal, right now they're making $300,000 PER DAY.

You call it "funding", they call it "pledge"..I simply call it money grabbing.

There is no difference except in use of words when the site, as I see it, is basically a giant shop where everything is sold, from the basics to play the game to ships, subscriptions, updates, add-ons, currency, t-shirts etc...everything there is a product and has a price and a buy button.

Are you also going to amazon and say you pledge money to amazon when you buy something and the merchandise you get is a "reward"?

I have no idea how much R&D is done there for the actual game, I guess $50M raised as of now is sufficient to actually develop such a game...but there is no question IN MY MIND that a huge percentage of development there is focused on merely creating ships which go on the site as "merchandise". You don't find it odd that the game itself is still in early Alpha but there are pages of SHIPs to buy?

 

[rivethead]

Flexy:

1) The game isn't in early alpha. It's in pre-alpha.
2) There are two games being developed: Star Citizen AND Squadron 42 (single player story that will be played in chapters). I "pledged" my $45 to get SQ42 - that's really the most important part to me. There is no p2w aspect in SQ42 - it's a single player game.
3) You keep mentioning subscriptions......subscriptions have little to do with actual gameplay. If you subscribe, you get some behind-the-scenes look type stuff (most of which is made available to everyone anyway).

In my opinion, you haven't done enough research. I won't deny that, on the surface, the games are a marketing blast with plenty of ways to get some of your money today. But once the games are released (if ever), it's really going to be "pay to skip content" rather than pay to win.

 

[Midwayman]

I just don't get the whole paying the cost of a AAA title for a virtual asset thing. I'm interested in the game, but it seems to have the profit model of World of Tanks, etc which I stopped playing because of how money grubbing it was.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I understand your point midway, I'd say wait for it to be released.

 

[QuantumPion]

Yeah no matter how tempting that racer is I'm not putting down any more money until I get some actual playable content.