Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

I knew people in World of Tanks back when I played that regular a year ago who maxed out credit cards for this game. I don't get it either.
I have nothing invested in this game and to be honest the prices drives me away from pledging anything to it until it is semi released.

I do hope it does get released in full capacity eventually however but holy shit at people who spent 20-30,000 on this game already.

You missed though that folks who spend over 1,000 bucks get first priority in customer serivce things via a concierge service.

A year ago they had a 24 hour marathon on twitch to raise money and talk about the game and during it they had 2 "flash sales" of ships that were going for 1k each(I think it was like 100 ships each sale or something?). They literally sold out in 7-15 minutes each time. It was insane.

Oh, apparently I got invited to the pre-Alpha. I'll try it out I suppose. They have a sweet updated version of the cheap ship I bought for $15... but I'll wait.

The game is too far away from shipping to really judge that, but the ships do not have any performance advantage. Early on the ships came with automatic lifetime insurance but they stopped that offer long ago. All the millions that have rolled in since then only allow people to start out in a different ship right away instead of having to play a while to buy it in-game. They have like 490k backers now, would be interesting to know how many backed during the last 6 months.

Keep in mind that like in your reasoning for Elite: Dangerous you automatically get the base which is a single player campaign, the first however many campaign arcs (I dont really keep track of their stretch goals) and the sub-less persistant multiplayer game - I bet most people treated it like that and picked out a package with a ship in the $30-$80 range. Average backer sits at under $100. Half a million people backed this game, of course there a couple thousand among those with a high disposable income.

Personally, I think buying every ship beforehand just reduces the time you'll end up playing the game before it gets old. I went with the base package and added one more ship because you can fly it with 2 people (big draw imo) and that's it.

Anybody remember how people used to bitch about games being $60.00?

I have given to one kickstarter and that was Hex, Shards of Fate. I had to spend a day considering whether or not to give to it. It ended up being $250.00(Pro-player), which is insane. I did this because of the incentive that came with the purchase. I figured over time that getting one free draft game every week for the life of the game would make the purchase worth it. Essentially I was getting $5.50 worth of play per week which did not include any of the potential winnings. This also came with a free 155 packs of cards and some other stuff.

A free ship in a game is not worth anywhere close to the amount of money that apparently people want to spend. If the ships had combat advantage, it would just drive away other players. The game is already being hyped as a graphics hog and thus a player will need a great computer just to enjoy it. Why not use the money to upgrade the computer? My mind was blown when 2 players gave $10,000 for "Hex,Shards of Fate". That is literally 50% of the cost of a brand new car.

The developers should initiate a $25,000 slot: Pimp my Ride

Prize: A new ship made of gold that sparkles from every view. Blind your opponent as you warp into a sector. The defense system is made from a rotating laser turrent system that looks remarkably like a set of wheels. All players within the sector will know you have arrived as a low base booming like sound will fall upon their speakers.

The sad thing is, it would most likely sell

Tuco_sl said:

Haha, reminds me of

The New Ships Available for Star Citizen

What's goofy is you know there are bean counters and marketing nerds sitting around brainstorming on how to tear away some of that sweet sweet moron-money from Star Citizen.

Click to expand...

People were reselling the Life time hull ship packages for a while, especially once the LT ships werent available anymore or those limited edition ones like the scythe etc but I think they clamped down on that.

Haven't pulled the trigger on this, waiting for release. My thinking is :

i) are these ships going to be available in game ?

ii) how hard will they be to get in game to justify the price they are selling for now ?

I don't see any answer that makes for happy reading.

Ya all this stuff will be available in game to buy with the in game cash.

Think the only justification of the prices now are that people are drooling over shiny new space ships and want to throw money at them so they can look at them in a hanger. Really the "bigger" draw was when they had the life time insurance for ships, but now not so much worth it.

As far as stretch goals go, really they can't keep offering new features every time else this game will just be a never ending add something new in and never get done. They should have ended the stretch goals but the people voted no so now we get random little dodads.

My google-fu found out that I can buy an upgrade pack for my 300i to turn it into the combat model and it retains lifetime insurance. Awww yea.

Of course I just tried the pre-alpha client. Takesforeverto load on a RAID 0 w/ SSDs pulling 1.1 Gigabyes read/write and 16 GB RAM. So....? lol. Couldn't actually get into a game but walked around the hanger a bit.

Flight_sl said:

Haven't pulled the trigger on this, waiting for release. My thinking is :

i) are these ships going to be available in game ?

ii) how hard will they be to get in game to justify the price they are selling for now ?

I don't see any answer that makes for happy reading.

Click to expand...

All ships will be able to be gotten in game and as gromit said the initial draw for folks was the life time insurance on the ship packages during the initial first backings on the project. All the life time insurance does though is if your ship is destroyed, you get a new "basic" ship for free(after time passes as roberts said you just wont be able to get new ships instantly as there has to be a "wait" or your order from the ship yards or some such to make it more sim like). Accessories, upgrades cargo etc will be completely a separate insurance supposedly.

As for how hard to come by, some will be as mentioned a wait to "order", others will be only able to be gotten from activities(like finding a derilict ship or boarding a hostile one and in combat taking it etc etc. So it really depends.

A few other things to consider:

-Supposedly there will be the persistent server(s) of the game owned and operated by Roberts CIG. Players are supposed to be able to make/host their own servers/universes with their own rule sets etc too. So those that dont want to pvp(CIG's will be "pvp slider'd") or want to get good ships to start, or no perm death(if you die you have to "will" your stuff to another avatar of yours), etc can just make their own. However seemingly most will play the CIG one though.

-SC is 2 games: Squadron 42(a military career based combat game) and the Star Citizen Universe one. People who opt to do the Squadron 42 are supposed to be able to complete a military "career" and thus become a "full citizen" in the SC verse. This means they get money and have a ship and some skills for their avatar. Those that dont supposedly will start with some sort of having to pay off their "citizenship" or some such the last I read on their lore. No idea if that still holds true.

-This has all indications that once launched as well that ponying up real cash will still give others an advantage to get many things in game on the official servers. I suspect one "alternate" starting way will be to buy for example an avatar that has already completed 42 and has a cash n ship starter too. etc etc.

To be honest, anyone thinking of getting into this game should 100% wait. My reasoning why is that:

1. Since LTI is done and they've continued over the last year to down play its importance too, that there is virtually no incentive for a purchaser of a ship package now because they dont get any original backer benefits. Its a stripped set up and once the game launches it should be no different than buying such then. I suspect though as time(years) go forward and the funding slows more considerably to the project(it cant just keep bustling forever to be sure) that they'll crank out all sorts of specials that will appeal to those who are not wanting to be "whales".

2. Roberts and the team continue to say that this game is going to be optimized for the "best" computers on the market. What this potentially means is that any current comps may be less optimal or worse not able to handle the game. If you dont exactly have a great comp nor plan to get one, then getting involved with SC could mean a waste of money if you wont be able to play it.

Any solid info yet that shows this is an actual MMO (eg Massively Multiplayer) and not just an online game with instanced lobbies?

Zodiac_sl said:

Any solid info yet that shows this is an actual MMO (eg Massively Multiplayer) and not just an online game with instanced lobbies?

Click to expand...

Well the core of the game is a massive MMO. The only difference is you can host your own servers and apply mod sets and stuff to it. I'd say it's just as much of a lobby game as EVE ever was regarding the economics/corps/etc and AFAIK there's no 'skills' per se, so that's where it starts to differ. It's still a space combat simulator on top of an economy instead of the traditional level based MMO.

Palum_sl said:

Well the core of the game is a massive MMO.

Click to expand...

Got any links? I can't find anything that says this will not be lobby/instanced based with a limit on the amount of people in each space instance.

Zodiac_sl said:

Got any links? I can't find anything that says this will not be lobby/instanced based with a limit on the amount of people in each space instance.

Click to expand...

You get in a ship and fly around. It's supposed to be giant MMO sized servers with persistent economies and you buy hanger spaces around the galaxy and buy ships and shit. I don't know what you're looking for, but if you want some Dev koolaid, there's plenty on the kickstarter and website. I can't help you beyond that because it's not out. It could come out and be 30 player servers. Dream vs. reality and all that.

The way i understand it:

Chat, guilds, trade, economy, story will be "unified" (on the official server) just like EVE, meaning it seems like one "megaserver".
The actual flying around will be instanced so it is mostly lagfree (important for a "realtime"-dogfighting-game). Players per instance will be tuned to get acceptable performance & number of players. Numbers not set in stone right now... could be 50 or could be 200...
Players in an instance are chosen according to some rules: , where you are in the galaxy (safe space/0.0), on your friendlist/foes, your guildies, same skill (numer of kills maybe?), etc. Some slots are reserved for "unexpected" players to mix it up a bit. Again, not really set in stone right now, we have to see how they handle it in the end.