******Official Star Citizen / Squadron 42 Thread******
- Thread starter Raumarik
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They're doing a huge amount and we've seen a tiny part of it. I doubt there's been a game made which has made so much about the development process publicly available and taken feedback on the scale CIG have.
It knows exactly what it is, we've only seen the DFM (to test physics/modeling) and Hangar (vanity), we've only seen videos or demos of other areas such as the planetside model and multicrew ships.
Honestly not worried about it failing, more worried about it running out of time and or money. With a staff of 200-250 posts $58 million doesn't last a huge amount of time.
It knows exactly what it is, we've only seen the DFM (to test physics/modeling) and Hangar (vanity), we've only seen videos or demos of other areas such as the planetside model and multicrew ships.
Honestly not worried about it failing, more worried about it running out of time and or money. With a staff of 200-250 posts $58 million doesn't last a huge amount of time.
It will play very differently to elite, why I tend to avoid comparing the two but the funds will keep coming for start citizen and I believe it'll hit $100 million before release, which should be enough, plus ongoing micro transactions after release etc.
I was quite a strong supporter of crowd funding/early access and overall it's probably been a positive experience when I combine all the games I've supported (around 20). Some are exceptionally good at involving you, like Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen but others are just a mess i.e. Godus.
I've had bigger disappointments from pre-orders though, Rome 2 and X-Rebirth being the two biggest for me personally, especially the latter.
What I'd say about Star Citizen is - spend what you can afford to lose, although frankly at $45 for the Aurora AC package you get access to Arena Commander which is rapidly improving and arguably going to have given me 50+ hours of gameplay already
I think you are perhaps making the assumption that people are expecting the perfect game it they pump in $1000+ into Star Citizen, that's not something you can honestly do. Having spoken with several who have done just that, most expect a good game and hoping for a great game. They are paying to have ships so that on release they can get on with play the way they want, rather than having to aim to obtain ships. This includes someone who has every single ship in the game and a few which are doubles (currently has over $29,000) in the game.
Secondly these are mostly 30+ guys with disposable income, most have weighed up the pros and cons of backing and many started low ($40 or so) and have gradually built it up over the past couple of years, as one guy put it he was paying $20/month for a couple of MMOs so he cancelled those and simply pumped that cash into Star citizen.
I absolutely agree that if the game is pants, it's a waste of money but I also agree that water is wet.
Bottom line - These are adults spending their money how they want to, there's already many who are disappointed because the game isn't being made specifically how they want and to their time scales, there will be even more who are disappointed post-release too and no doubt plenty who will only discover the game after release.
CIG were clever in how they approach funding though, you've nailed it Chris with the ship pledge, I mean sorry it's not for a ship is it? It's funding the game (that old chestnut lol).
I doubt there are many games which could be viable using this model though and those which have tried and are already failing (most of Kickstarter games then) are damaging it to an extent where it may be impossible for anyone to get another game up and running any time soon on the same funding model.
Personally I'm more concerned with on-going costs of running the thing and where they'll get that from, people seem to think it costs peanuts to run gaming servers hosting thousands of concurrent connections to a high level of availability, where as it's hideously expensive to do so.
I doubt there are many games which could be viable using this model though and those which have tried and are already failing (most of Kickstarter games then) are damaging it to an extent where it may be impossible for anyone to get another game up and running any time soon on the same funding model.
Personally I'm more concerned with on-going costs of running the thing and where they'll get that from, people seem to think it costs peanuts to run gaming servers hosting thousands of concurrent connections to a high level of availability, where as it's hideously expensive to do so.
Never seen that before tbh, looks like the menu screen for Arena Commander where you pick what you want to play? I'd relaunch it and load directly from the menu (hit escape - pick Arena Commander) to see if it helps.
It'll be interesting to see how the Herald affects grey market pricing for the Aurora - not that there's many around. The Herald will have LTI, whilst it's a tiny thing it's got to be said CIG say it's nothing, not to worry about it then make a big deal of putting "ships" up for pledge with it there as a sweetener. They know what they're doing.
If there are CCUs for the Herald down the line, which we've no reason to suspect there won't be then I expect a lot of them to be sold and drip fed to the grey market at the usual mark up. So if you're considering a larger ship later it may make sense to get a Herald now and CCU when the larger ship is hangar ready.
If there are CCUs for the Herald down the line, which we've no reason to suspect there won't be then I expect a lot of them to be sold and drip fed to the grey market at the usual mark up. So if you're considering a larger ship later it may make sense to get a Herald now and CCU when the larger ship is hangar ready.
I don't see why they can't do the following:
1. Allow CCUs for any ship, whether in the hangar or not. This would give a continual drip feed of funding, don't allow downgrading obviously.
2. Lock LTI to the account the ship is bought with, if it's transferred it loses LTI. The LTI becomes an LTI license which can be applied to any ship on that account, you get one LTI license per existing LTI ship to move around your fleet as you want, when applied it becomes permanent and the ship as mentioned before loses the LTI license if it's then transferred.
Oh no wait I do, LTI is being used by CIG to drive sales, it's worthless, unless it's got sales potential
1. Allow CCUs for any ship, whether in the hangar or not. This would give a continual drip feed of funding, don't allow downgrading obviously.
2. Lock LTI to the account the ship is bought with, if it's transferred it loses LTI. The LTI becomes an LTI license which can be applied to any ship on that account, you get one LTI license per existing LTI ship to move around your fleet as you want, when applied it becomes permanent and the ship as mentioned before loses the LTI license if it's then transferred.
Oh no wait I do, LTI is being used by CIG to drive sales, it's worthless, unless it's got sales potential
It'd be up to you which ones you use it on though, if it's such a tiny bonus then I can't see why CIG would be against it. They still get the marketing bonus whilst neither annoying those who backed early to get LTI or those who see it as an irrelevance.
I'll put my hands up and say I've traded a lot on the grey market in the past 12 months, its paid for all my ships in SC, my family holiday last year and pretty much my current rig. The only reason I stopped is down to the money not going to CIG, the prices have risen constantly on the GM and it's getting a little silly now. CIG haven't actually managed to come up with a solution, all they've done so far is reinvigorate it every couple of months. The changes they made to gifting pledges only made certain ships more desirable, rather than less.
Of course all of my trading was done under a different name as with most middlemen/traders.
As youv'e said Paul the only real way to settle the GM is to start locking LTI and limited ships to accounts when they're purchased, black market trades will always happen but people are far, far less likely to go down that route.
I suspect the CCU situation is so they can get a few extra bucks out of people doing them, I haven't really looked into it but I suspect that upgrading to a Hornet via CCUs from an Aurora would be slightly more expensive than simply pledging directly for the Hornet. What they're doing with CCUs is sustaining the grey market and the limited upgrades that come out help keep it going too. Lock those upgrades to the account they're bought on after X days, job done.
I'm not anti-grey market obviously but I think we get very mixed signals from CIG over it. They claim they want to shut it down but take measures which do the opposite.
Of course all of my trading was done under a different name as with most middlemen/traders.
As youv'e said Paul the only real way to settle the GM is to start locking LTI and limited ships to accounts when they're purchased, black market trades will always happen but people are far, far less likely to go down that route.
I suspect the CCU situation is so they can get a few extra bucks out of people doing them, I haven't really looked into it but I suspect that upgrading to a Hornet via CCUs from an Aurora would be slightly more expensive than simply pledging directly for the Hornet. What they're doing with CCUs is sustaining the grey market and the limited upgrades that come out help keep it going too. Lock those upgrades to the account they're bought on after X days, job done.
I'm not anti-grey market obviously but I think we get very mixed signals from CIG over it. They claim they want to shut it down but take measures which do the opposite.
You'll see the Mustang in the hangar but the Arena Commander module (hit escape and enter it that way if you want) will give you the 300i until the Mustang is ready for the combat module.
I can't even remember if you can get in the cockpit of the Mustang yet, don't remember trying on mine.
Posted this on Reddit but doubt you all go there, my first thought when I heard the audio around the failed Antares rocket launch last night.
Warning unnecessarily large image:
I'll show this to the wife later, see if I can justify a new GPU on the back of it..
Warning unnecessarily large image:
I'll show this to the wife later, see if I can justify a new GPU on the back of it..
That's my current biggest issue with ED Francky, I need more content but they are adding it. Some genuinely different stations now, my biggest single gripe though is that ANY cargo lifted in space is considered stolen, which makes no sense, it also makes the game far safer as you're less likely to be attacked by a fellow non-NPC player.
It'll affect the lower end ships but not the others, CCUs will be in for all ships, we've been told this time and again but it's never caused the connie etc prices to drop, same for the Banu MM/retaliator etc. Part of that is that the people trying to sell them paid almost that for the ship so they don't want to make a loss.
I know that as I palmed a lot off on the current traders when I got out of GM trading.
I know that as I palmed a lot off on the current traders when I got out of GM trading.