Any Star Citizens out there?

I get your point Soy,

but one can hardly go back to the Shareware days where 2 kids on an old 386 built a game gave you 2 levels and made you pay for the rest all whilst expecting the quality of work RSI (and yes even PGI) is delivering.

I do agree many people spend a whole lot of money for nothing more than air (kinda reminds me of what happens all too often on the stock exchange,... but that is a different discussion) yet it is the trade-off for:

Not having your developer leashed by a big publisher
and
Keeping the future economy of the game safe

(don't have time to come up with more examples)

I'm not even quite sure if I'm really going to love SC, but even simply the idea behind it is worth me adding my few bucks to its development.

 

Exactly... I said yesterday in this thread that I don't play betas, and it's also known that I don't like this micro transaction or gouging the whales BS......... but I still gave MWO a bit of money ($20-25 maybe?) back in beta.

Why?

Cuz lets face reality, which is what most of you did with SC in a different context - and that is, knowing damn well if MWO fails, what the fuck else am I gonna play for online BattleTech action in a modern sense. Nothing. Right? Right. It can't fail; you have to support, even if the only option is fucking you (or, some adjacent whale) in the ass.

That's bitter stuff.

 

Ok big guy calm the feff down, put the bong down for a minute , rip the tin foil insulation down and open a fuckin window and get some fresh air in ok?

I know what a precedent is, and yes what PGi and a lot of AAA game studios and their corporate overlords are doing is horseshit i agree. But thats not what Star Citizen is doing. Not by a long shot. And i guarantee you would ANY other company try to do what SC has been able to pull off they'd be laughed out from the industry and be doomed forever as a big joke. (You know who tried right? If not google Transvesre)

What you don't seem to get is this. Its a kickstarter of sorts, there would be no game if we the players would not back the game. Not a single one of us are forced to pay more than 35$ if we so choose. Every ship every thing they have made now and have for sale will be ernable ingame with ingame currency buy playing the game.
They ppl you choose to call "fat tards making SC" chose to NOT ask for a single cent of money from investors NOT A FUCKIN CENT!!?! Cos now NO ONE has any power over them to force them to put out a unfinished product to early or force them to do any of the now standard duchy DLC shit that AAA devs tend to do. Their initial plan was to get 4-5 mil on kickstarter and then go to investors with proof that "hey look ppl want this, how about investing some money" (hell we know they had 2 interested investors the second Chris Roberts publicly told hes going to make a new game at BDC 2012, and at that point no one knew what it even was, fuck it could have been a car game or a Cat fps) But we backers sowed them that de did not need to we wanted a game like this so much that we were ready to put heart and soul into this ourselves. When i buy a ship for lets say for 300$ i now that ship probably inset forth 300$ in digital assets, but i back the game and give 300$ to a game devs company i thrust and am comfortable giving my money so that they can make the damn best space sim EVER, in peace and not having to push shit out way too early as a buggy mess that gets everybody riled up and angry screaming scam, scam and lies!

And you know why i thrust them so? Its because they are so transparent on so many levels in their development process. They talk to us they answer questions and concerns they tackle issues when they arise and communicate to us at all times where in the process they are. They put out 4 weekly shows on youtube and twitch ranging from 30 min to 1 hour long. And gives us in depth design documents on ideas they are implementing and explain to us what they do. I have NEVER seen a game company be so open, and i sincerely hope that other companies will follow suite.
They also have NO marketing budget in nill, they are solely relying on word by mouth and social medias like FB, reddit etc.

I have followed the development from the day 1 and i can with 110% honestly say there is not a more honest game studio in the game industry at the moment than Cloud Imperium Games. Do they have their faults sure, can they do better sure and they admit that themselves all the time, and they do. They just don't talk about ti they actually do what they say they will. Thats true honestly imo.

I do agree that the practices of the game industry today is rotten overall and what happens is bad. And things need to change.
But thats why we need more companies like CIG who are honest and open. to really crusade a new era in games development.And the best way to do that is to give them your money and show that way big AAA devs the finger.
If you want to be negative about the current state of the industry by all means but putting all companies big or small under the same comb is bs and a bit hypocritical.

PS I'm out of tissues also now btw too, i hope you're happy..

 

By that you are arguing that ANYTHING different is establishing precedent.... well no you're simply buying a different product via different methods. One that encourages you to pay more but is that any different than choosing from a range of cars with optional extra's?

Its unashamedly a different pricing model to the traditional box or digital sales but then I hate being charged £60 for a new FPS game that will be old in two months but people pay that again and again and again.... (points at Call of Duty and all the major franchises).

Thats fairly standard pricing now here for a AAA FPS game because American companies screw us blind as cash cows while charging American's less. Am I bitter at them for enjoying that situation where they pay less? No, I'm envious if I'm being honest as I simply choose not to play BF Hardline etc.

Heres the problem though people are willing to pay the price and do even if I'm not one of them. You can analyse it as much as you want, use as much emotion as you want, yell as much as you want... but that changes nothing. All you can do is vote with your wallet and not buy in. Or as I said in this case, buy the cheapest package, which is coincidentally well under the price of a AAA game, and grow by your in game actions as you normally would in a single player game.

People put a much higher value on their leisure time than they used to. I run on average an 8 hour work day (plus lunch), then add almost 4 hours total commuting... add sleep, family etc... yeah I put a high value on my leisure time...

 

@Boltthrower:

I fail to see how it's better to put the playerbase on the line rather than investors.

You're talking about 'trust' and that's a lot to justify triple figures for pixels over years down the line. Homie don't play that game, that's just me tho.

At least we agree that shit in general, overall, is bad. If there's differences of opinion about this game or that company, I'll leave that down to petty subjectivity.

-----

@ Remarius:

We all value our leisure time. It doesn't mean your utility of satisfaction increases only according to price. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a damn fool. Economics bro, I went to college for it.

When you compare spending money on games, to cars, that's exactly where shit got fucked up. Exactly where shit got fucked up bro. Simmer on that.

 

Tragically I thoroughly agree.

 

@Soy Its an example of a product so simmer on that because it didn't take a brain surgeon to work that out...

Open your eyes and go look in the supermarket for other examples if you really need different ones.....

 

You missed the momentary edit, peep it.

Anyone who thinks that how much money they spend on entertainment is directly correlated to their satisfaction with said entertainment, is a fucking idiot.

 

Thats very true, but even if i have spent quite lot on Star Citizen i dont expect for a moment that i'll get more satisfaction out of the game. I'll get exactly as much as i decide to put into it. My enjoyment is in my head not in how much i have spent. What i have spent is to on my part ensure that this game gets done, and done right.

Perhaps in a broad sense its not better to put the players no the line. But in the case of SC the players put themselves on the line freely by their own choosing and at that point the devs realized they did not need investors (Nor did they want any, for obvious reasons). Thats gives them a LOT more room and space to actually make the game the players want and not what some suit in a boardroom has heard that some statistics say what ppl should want.

Yes i'm talking about thrust as thats what i have in said company. If they fuck up super badly i wont, but in a sense this is like working the stock market or play high stakes on a casino, sometimes you win sometimes you lose badly. With PGI we all lost badly imo, some not as much cos they were smart enough not to put in a lot of money. But as the saying goes "you can't win if you don't play".
By any barometers i have and can see or have seen so far by CIG they are doing great and development is turning out great. Does that mean the end product will be all that i hoped for, perhaps not but in a genre of games that was lost for 10+ years i'm happy it's coming back with a bang with games like EC and Eliteangerous.
We've also seen total flops from companies (you know who) trying to imitate the success of CIG and failing so miserably they made themselves look like chumps.
Like you said "Homie don't play that game, that's just me tho" indeed you feel burnt and get that, i'm willing to take the plunge with CIG and Star Citizen to see that this game gets done right and it becomes the great game a lot of ppl hopes it will become.

Making a AAA game today is not cheap, so all that money they have is and has been allocated for exactly that, that 73 mil they have does not include a cent of marketing budget nor anything else that money to make the game itself.
Will it make him (Chris) and other a lot of $$$ if its a success hell yeah, you betcha.
But if i buy a 300$ i help secure the games development and for that i get access to said ship early as i don't have to earn it, but that doesn't make it P2W, cos this game has no levels no stats. Just cos i have the ship on day one i still have to crew it equip it and run it, and 5-6 guys with just entry level pledges (30-40$) can come and blow my shit up, leaving me reeling with having to wait for insurance to replace my ship (for bigger ships this could take 1-3 weeks) and again having to crew it and equip it for what i want ti to do.
So in the end do i really get a advantage just cos i pledged more, no i dont. I do get more headaches tho

On this we do agree yes on all points this is and always will be subjective and thats great, what i think a lot of ppl here tried to explain to you is why we feel so passionately about this project. We have gotten a lot of shit all over he internet from ppl who dont get what its about or why, mainly because like we have said here both meany times. We have gotten burnt by AAA companys that have suckerd the public fro thewir money and left them dry and feeling used wit ha subpar product.

Thats why my mantra for 2015 is:


And so far i've been able to stick to it. Hope i can hold out the whole year, and then some.

 

3 replies for this huge post, Bolt...

Exactly, yes, this is why it's very very difficult to gauge what fair prices are. There's industries and arbitration and regulation and all of this shit in every single marketplace just cuz of that thing alone. This isn't even accounting supply/demand shit.

It is impossible to quantify the value of satisfaction across the whole userbase/clientele with 100% accuracy. What I perceive as "value" is an abstract concept - same as you, and our numbers will never match up. Cuz what is "fun"? So fleeting... But at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that $500 for a camo skin is a bit too much. Right? Wrong. Someone out there thinks it's justifiable. That's fucked up, and if you take away that option from that person they'll whine cuz they wanna fork over large amounts of cash for, well, anything. Bah...

-----

In my opinion, too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth. This is same concept as why, theoretically, a benevolent tyrant is truly the most efficient form of government. IE, if they made all of the best choices and decisions, everytime, sure would be a lack of red tape and pork in the annual budget, that's for sure. What I'm getting at is, yeah it's great to take in ideas from players, but at some point that becomes stupid. Just this morning I read people talking about how MWO should feature more anime-ish mechs, another post 5 mins later about how customization should be removed and only stock mechs available, etc. If PGI listened to all of these people the game would suck even more. They've already listened to them enough. Take in ideas, yes. But you don't pander to these fucking people like muppets. There is a sense of art and craftsmanship in creating a game, and everytime some mongo asks PGI to nerf XYZ they want scuff up their work. I'm guilty of it, we all are. The most dangerous form is not the agenda-driven Elitist pushes, it's the complete retard shit that clogs up the channels of more important communication (see: General Disc @ official forum).

If you ask me, now that IGP is gone, PGI should be doing what the fuck they want, and only what they want. Cuz that is most likely the only way the game stays afloat, financially. At this point I give them room to fuck the whales over cuz I don't think the game would even exist anymore without that parasitic relationship.

-----

If someone can kill your hero mech, or your triple figure starship with a cbill version, great, that's how it should be. Otherwise it'd just be blatant pay to win. The point is that it's a Pandora's Box. Something, someone needs to bulwark against the flow. The trend is to monetize everything lately, correct? If that monetization keeps increasing, where does it stop? When is it enough for you to say "oh, fuck that"???

-----

PS - take solace in the notion that I find "perpetuity" to be a highly valuable asset in any commodity (aka some starship you just bought for RL money). An example of shit I find completely unworthy is, say, MC consumables in MWO. People using that shit I say to their face, suck a dick. If you're gonna set money on fire, at least make it burn slow.

 

@Soy

All what you say it very true and that you have put some real thought behind what you say is a nice change, as that sadly cant be said about a lot of proponents of SC or other games like that (genre or build model).

It is very true that if any developer listens to much to what their fans say/demand/want the game wont turn out well at all. I personally that's not the case with SC, and they've so far been able to balance it very well.

This is very true and here its i think our collective responsibility to try to push back and say enough is enough. We just have i guess all different ideas on how that should or can be done.

 

I gotcha, if you think an alternative company is the way to go about reinforcing that responsibility, I think that is misguided but I respect it.

Plus the game looks fine so it's not like you're playing trash like a phone game and not paying your mortgage so you can upgrade your farm or something absurd.

I'm hypocritical but I explained why earlier and it seems to be the general consensus - bite the bullet if there's no alternative... BT/MW would essentially be dead if not for MWO, lets be real. They need a couple bucks. But a few hundred? Barf. I have to turn a blind eye to the whale rape. BARF...

Yeah I think about this shit, hardcore, all the time. I'm a true gamer lord, I'm not a professional nerd like most of you gentlemen.

 

Most interesting thread I've read anywhere for quite a while, but I'm running out of popcorn now, so can you wait for a bit while I restock please?

Hi, my name is Chris and I'm a SC addict...... Isn't that how meetings are supposed to start?

Two things I guess.

Of course spending money doesn't correlate to enjoyment (no cause and effect here folks, move along), but my perception of enjoyment and what I am prepared to spend on it most certainly does correlate.

In the case of SC of course, that is a hope of enjoyment, not something I can already benchmark, but I am prepared to take that risk in the hope that I will get sufficient jollies later. I might well turn out to be wrong and it will be a great big golden turkey (for me anyway), but I've spent a lot on backing this, and that is a chance I was happy to take. I've put money into other kickstarter game projects, most notably Pillars of Eternity, on exactly the same basis. In effect I view as risk capital.

The trend to monetising in games with in game purchases etc throughout is I agree the great gaming meme of the moment, and is surely being pushed to daft lengths by many games. However it carries, inevitably, the seeds of its own destruction, as people will only buy (in sufficient amount overall) if they reckon they are getting value for that cost. If a company takes the p*ss by say releasing a ship / mech / whatever for stupidly high cash purchase that means the game is horrible unless you own it, that game will fail.

I'm not at all calm about games I really like failing, such as MWO if they (in my view continue) to get it wrong, but that's evolution in action for you. Do I think there could be better implementations of the battletech universe than this to give me giant stompy roobot fun, sure, but I don't see anything coming?

But anyway what's too much and what 'breaks the game'? If MWO made say a MC purchase only UAC5 that was 10% better than c-bills ones, say for the equivalent of $1, would people pay it? How about if its $5, $10...etc etc. How broken would the game be by this? Its probably very different for different gamers, and in effect wholly subjective. Some economist could plot a nice graph if it though

I think the cost of ships in SC and of the packages etc in MWO is eye watering, and I can, if I choose pay it without having to sell the family into slavery to manage it. I have to presume at least in SC's case, that they get sufficient purchasers at these prices to continue this way but SC seems rather to be exceptional in its ability to do this.

SC haven't got meaningful financials in the public domain (yet anyway) but I have what can be got on PGI but its not very useful as there is no operational data (player numbers, behavior etc) with which to study trends.

 

That's because pgi is a closed shop with very little transparency. They don't want people seeing behind the curtain. Success or failing they want to keep that to themselves and generate revenue. In this CIG and PGI are very different.

 

Company - check
Indie - check
Make game - check
Online one - check
"Free to play" title - check
Futuristic space theme - check
FPS - check
You're a pilot - check
Whalerape before launch - check

Not that different bro. Finer print holds the details, but don't be coy.

Bunch of zealots (get it? cuz you take all this on faith) pattin each other on the nuts for accomplishing nothing but thinning their wallets.

Reading shit like this makes me want to punch a kitten:

- A UAC5 that worked better for MC would instantly break the game. I would uninstall with absolutely zero reservations whatsoever within the span of a breath. No question - cuz the game would immediately become only for scrubs.

- Second paragraph... honestly, it would not surprise me if someone in like, Qatar already has sold their family for some garbage in Second Life or whatever. I know you're being silly, so am I (kinda), but still.

- Can study inefficient day traders or mid-binge gambling addicts for analogous data.

*sighs*

I... shouldn't be in this thread... btw I liked your post Chris nothing personal

 

Soy, I'd never have put a post in at all if I was going to be put off my debate! As someone else commented, clearly you have thought about this and whilst I don't agree with you about some of it, I've enjoyed reading all the exchanges and found the discussion interesting (as in thought provoking not just entertaining), and it made me laugh at times. makes it a good thing imho.

I think what you want is too purist for me to think its practical in a lot of ways. I want good games to play, and I accept that means I am going to have to part with cash to get them. Whether I pay for that upfront off a 'shelf' in a store, virtual or otherwise, or pump cash into SC or Pillars isn't much different to me.

Game companies (I'm being careful not to break that down into parts between say authors and publishers etc) have to make money if I am to go on getting games, and it simply isn't that different to me if I pay for a game in the store and play it, or if I get the game 'free' and pay for things in it. Its all a question of degree.

The big issue I agree is 'pay to win'. I don't think that definitions of that are sufficiently the same to be able to say 'it's all bad'. Saying "it sucks, because I can't do 'X' in game unless I part with $$$" is much more valid, but most of the cries I hear about 'pay to win' are in my view pretty unfounded.

Yours wasn't, seemed to me that the foundations were solid, but I don't agree with you about where the line is. If the slightly better UAC for $1 is a game breaker for you, surely clan mechs that you could only get for cash were even more so?

I do think PGI's business model is flawed and that they have a demonstrably weird understanding of customer economics / game design etc as we can see by what they have implemented and the way they have done it. Difficult to be sure without data to back it.

I'm still hung on Remarius' (for I think it was he) point that without MWO I'd have no mech game - so, do I continue the charade and lob cash into the clan wave pack or not? Decisions, decisions.

 

Yes I'm being purist and impractical, but eventually you compromise when you're actually, finally, at the table and being heard.

By that I mean, at some point it just steamrolls over everything if nobody takes a stand at some point.

Not me.

Extrapolate it to a galvanizing industry man. I don't know, maybe Cliffy B comes out and revolutionizes gaming again, except this time it's not from a map design standpoint, it's from a economic standpoint. Kinda hard to explain but I'm just saying, consider my argument a proxy by someone worthy of listening to. That's what would be needed for something to change or push back. The caveat is that they would have to put their money where their mouth is (instead of the customer's get it).

Your last paragraph; that was one of my points... about biting the bullet/no alternative.

Nice post.

PS - Clan mechs aren't overpowered, if only due to the linear nature of them. Less power due to less control (customization). Whereas that power should be at the discretion of the players from the getgo, rather than just nerfed cuz PGI thinks the players wont wield it responsibly (more like PGI can't balance around 'imbalance' [aka what Clan vs IS actually is in canon]).

 

It very much depends on which rules or restrictions are in place. We beat the good clan team we were playing in the tournament on Monday every time we controlled the range of the engagement. Not sure if that was due to the restriction on mechs you could use (max 1 mech of each chassis), or just that we combined members of our old team into the Dudes one so they were caught off balance, or that we were just better on the day. Either way we adapted to their mechs/tactics far faster than they did then crushed them 12-2 to 12-6 five times in a row.

Quid pro quo when we were caught in a location they had us at clan LPL optimal range and no way to close in without crossing a large open area (Alpine Peaks) they raped us. In hindsight I know what tactic we should use next time!

 

Well that was interesting...

Melted the duplicate Reclaimer and Starfarer to pick up an Orion as can't justify the cost of buying it atm. It mentioned 390 on the final pay screen so I tried to enter 390 as it was saying I could only apply 325 against it. It refused as price was above ship amount... and changed the asking price to 325.......

So confirmed that if you melt then it charges it at the previous no VAT amount (eventually!).

Could unmelt the Starfarer now I guess as never needed that extra.

 

"Free to play" title - check.. ummm, I'm not sure SC is F2P. The solo campaign certainly will not be.