[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Rennadrel]

The Origin 890 looks like a giant speed boat.

[Edge-]

Ahh, it keeps getting better I see...

TLDW? 20 minutes is quite a bit of time, and I just desperately wish there was a site you could pop YT videos in and have it spit out a transcript of what the person said. Would make getting to the meat and potatoes of these videos much easier.

[Orange Joe]

TLDW? 20 minutes is quite a bit of time, and I just desperately wish there was a site you could pop YT videos in and have it spit out a transcript of what the person said. Would make getting to the meat and potatoes of these videos much easier.

Only watched a couple minutes, but it seems they are selling upgrade packages for ships now.

[Edge-]

Only watched a couple minutes, but it seems they are selling upgrade packages for ships now.

That's not terribly surprising, I imagine those are a lot cheaper for them to whip up than brand-new ships/vehicles. CIG is going to need to continue fundraising at their current rate for a while longer by the looks of things, so they're going to have to either keep getting creative on what they sell consumers or send Roberts out to try to wrangle more private capital to cover the remaining development costs.

[Orange Joe]

That's not terribly surprising, I imagine those are a lot cheaper for them to whip up than brand-new ships/vehicles. CIG is going to need to continue fundraising at their current rate for a while longer by the looks of things, so they're going to have to either keep getting creative on what they sell consumers or send Roberts out to try to wrangle more private capital to cover the remaining development costs.

I could be wrong, but from what I can see the upgrade packages are still low tier upgrades.

[Orange Joe]

I honestly can't see much of a shit besides it's "grade B" stuff...

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/c...bration-Page-2

I'm assuming this will be the usual D - C - B - A - S(?) grading system, B wouldn't really be "low" tiered.

The video also highlights a couple of shit that CIG sort of went back on their word.

Mid tier at best. Buying a better ship would get you more than an upgrade package.

[Rennadrel]

Not at all surprising. Edge hit the nail on the head though, they've got a fair bit of work left and need to keep funding up. They might be able to get more investment capital if they can get something tangible that looks more like a finished product though.

[WoWGoneBad]

So while doing other things, I listened to the video it is essentially saying that the game is moving towards a pay to win setup. With some patch, you can now buy ship upgrades with Real Money rather than working for it in game.

Essentially what many in this thread have been saying at some point or another. What makes this different is that he took time to look at all areas he discussed so he had a frame of reference to back him up.

[kenn9530]

So while doing other things, I listened to the video it is essentially saying that the game is moving towards a pay to win setup. With some patch, you can now buy ship upgrades with Real Money rather than working for it in game.

Essentially what many in this thread have been saying at some point or another. What makes this different is that he took time to look at all areas he discussed so he had a frame of reference to back him up.

you wont be able to buy the best upgrades for real money, plus when your ship is destroyed you will most likely lose all those upgrades and just get a stock replacement and your ship is going to be destroyed fairly often, once the game is released you cant buy ships for real money.

There is only going to be a small minority of players who actually have some of the really expensive long term ships, the average player will have only upgraded to a reasonable ship most likely something that can be used solo but also with friends.

[kenn9530]

Legit question here, how do you buy the best upgrades?



Considering that they already went back on their word about what they would and wouldn't sell as its pointed out on the video, how can one be sure that will actually be the case?



That's the case in most multiplayer video games, only the ones who are willing to invest more time/money on it are the ones with top grade stuff.

there is going to be a variety of upgrades you can do to your ship eventually so best will depend on the ship, but all will be available from actual gameplay at some point, probably limited to having certain reputation levels with certain factions

they have already been selling ship parts and ships for a long time now, they only said when the game is released you will have to earn ships and stuff ingame at that point.

top grade items will probably be tied to being of a certain reputation with a faction so no matter the money you spend you still need that time investment to get those items, unless your rich you may not even use many ship upgrades at all if you lose them when the ship explodes or possibly need to pay a certain amount to reclaim upgrades for the new ship.

Still many unknowns about the game time will tell.

[Wilian]

It's always amusing to see people defending P2W mechanics with their moving goalposts. We'll soon be at point where someone says it's not P2W because you can't buy the end credits. Oh wait, Chris Roberts already did.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Legit question here, how do you buy the best upgrades?

If you pledged at the entry level $40 Digital Mercenary tier which just gets you the game, you'll get 1000 starting UEC when the game goes live. As of right now, everyone just gets a starting balance of a few thousand UEC for the sake of quickly testing the game, and your balance is reset with each server wipe. Thus, your UEC balance on the website currently is not reflective of your UEC balance in game.

When the project first began and only the hangar and arena commander modules were out, the only way to buy equipment was to go to the RSI website, log in, and then go to the store and spend your website balance on weapons. Alternatively, you could play Arena Commander and earn the weapons. Since the public universe launched, you can now go around the system and buy individual equipment from shops (here's a spreadsheet detailing where you can buy equipment).

When I logged in after the wipe, I simply hopped in my 315p, did ten minutes of skimmer missions (6500 UEC for 3 minutes of work each, plus one minute of travel time, the most efficient way to make money in the game ATM after drug running was nerfed), then flew to HUR-L1, and bought a Lightfire, the best engine in the game that my ship can fit. Currently, the real time sinks are earning enough money to buy new ships. Last I checked, the base starter ship, the Aurora, costs 220k. A 315p costs 1.1 million. A Cutlass costs 1.5 million. A Constellation costs 4.5 million. A Hammerhead costs 21 million. At the moment, you can't really earn any ships or equipment that cost more than a million until more lucrative sources of UEC are added. Currently waiting on mission sharing to be added, but the big thing is we needed server meshing to be implemented which will allow the amount of objects that can be in a system to be dramatically increased.

[kenn9530]

Yes, indeed there are, thus why answers such as “you win by having fun, and fun is different things to different people" & "This may be a foreign concept to gamers as the majority of games are about winning and losing, but Star Citizen isn’t a normal game" when asked about the matter instead proper details about how this won’t cause much of an impact on the game are utter bullshit that leads most to believe they haven’t really thought this through.



That doesn’t really answer my question, apparently there were specific ships among other stuff that CiG claimed they wouldn’t sell, yet ended up selling as limited shit as it’s pointed out on the video, my question is, what’s stopping them from changing their minds about that as well?

Also, why are we going from the point that only top-tier stuff matters?

they have never claimed they wouldnt sell any ship as far as i have seen, just certain ships are only available during specific sales, gives people a chance to get a certain ship they want at some point thye just have to wait.

as for ship upgrades we dont know how good the upgrades are per tier and what the difference is between the best and the basic so would have to wait until then to see how that could affect gameplay.

as long as the game is done right it shouldnt really matter what ship a player bar any ships with limited jump range but those ships can probably run missions within a small area until they get something larger.

[kenn9530]

It's all on the video I linked, the guy doesn't just talk about it, he shows you and links you the sources on the vid description.

Yet again, I ask, what's stopping them from "changing their plans" about that as well?

the largest ship in the kickstarter was the idris and you cant directly buy it outside of a sale of which happens once a year for those ships, LTI is only available on certain occasions also, so everyone has equal access to it at some point.

It doesnt say from anywhere i can see in the video or on the origional kickstarter about ships not being sold again, but even then it doesnt really matter since one ship is not going to be the best at everything just a few select roles so your going to need a specific ship for the job you want to do.

I dont really see proper pirate players using overly expensive ships unless they are rich and can afford to lose either, we need to know what sort of downsides are to being a pirate so it encourages proper gameplay and not just griefing for the sake of it.

They should maybe offer starter packages each focusing on a different role in ships like the terapin/cutlass maybe nothing bigger than a freelancer, i think most people would be fine with those sort of options as i do think the current starter packages are too limited although it shouldnt take too long to upgrade to a freelancer/cutlass ingame.

[kenn9530]

Dude, what the hell you on about? CIG itself said it, I quoted it, it's sourced on the video description:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/c...y-Sale-Details

"We are aware that the original Kickstarter page states that these ships would not be sold again."

Can sit there and try to convince me that this is "okay" since it's Star Citizen, but truth is, if it was any other video game, we would all be calling it pay-2-win.

... and so far the only positive in it, is that they are going to allow us to set-up private servers, allowing people like me to avoid all that sort of shit.

like i said it doesnt clearly state on the origional kickstarter anywhere limited sales ships wont be sold again not that at some point cig didnt mention it, but then again why would it matter, standard ship weapons are not that much more powerful between gun tiers and there will only be a handful of true combat ships that would give you little chance of survival depending on your ship.

Like it or hate it without selling ships we wouldnt be getting the game at all, not one other company would even try something like star citizen.

[kenn9530]

I though you had said that as far as you could see, they didn’t state it, which makes no sense, considering that they are saying exactly the opposite on their own website…. but I sure as hell won’t dig trough all that to prove you wrong, CIG itself already took care of it.

As for why does it matter? Because you were stating that they won’t be selling ships after the game gets released, which is something you nor anyone can say for sure, because CIG already proven to “change their mind” on shit like that in multiple situations as it was just pointed out.

They are selling grade B stuff, according to the document Val provided, the highest tier is A, that makes it at least medium-high tier stuff, also, as I highlighted, they are describing some of these ships they were selling as “rare spaceships”, it doesn’t sound just “standard” shit they are selling here…

Also, “the game needs it” and the “you win by having fun” are just poor ass excuses that can be applied to any other video game out there, you either don’t approve pay-2-win elements on video games or you just don’t care about them, but let’s not go “oh this one is an exception cuz reasons.”

P2W is in every single game without exception, there is always a way for someone to use real money, the only thing its really relevant in SC is pirating but if the system is done right the pirates shouldnt be wasting time going after targets that are not even worth the fuel, combat is only going to be a small part of star citizen and you can ignore it for the most part if you wish.

We will have to wait to see stats of different classes of equipment modules but for the most part the upgrades should only provide a slight boost, we also will need to know how insurance works with upgrades.

[Kyanion]

P2W is in every single game without exception

Keep moving those goalposts while also being totally wrong at the same time.

[MrAnderson]

Funny how we get people that never played the game telling the people who play it how it is or isin't.

[kenn9530]

Let me see if I understand this now… so, now Star Citizen does have P2W elements, but so does ever other single video game out there, however! In Star Citizen case, it’s ok because they supposedly won’t be that relevant to the game… even if we don’t have much information on it yet… is that it? Jesus Christ dude… I think that I understand where you are trying to get into now, and I can sort of agree, but you are doing it in such a poor way…

Not only most of those “P2W” video games don’t sell anything that impacts gameplay to players, but also have systems such as the “Soul Bound” to prevent players selling to each other, and will even outright ban you for trying.

Just bring up World of Warcraft example, where you can also purchase gold directly from Blizzard, yet it hardly has any impact on it due how the game is structured while also giving players the option to play it without having to pay for a subscription, which might be sort of the case in Star Citizen, at least I certainly fucking hope so… the problem is, when asked about it, instead of information on these systems, or at least the acknowledgment of their existence we got a “there is no really winning in star citizen” bullshit of a reply.

Some ships are going to be better at certain roles thats obvious but in the larger picture it should only be an inconvienence at most to a smaller percentage of the playerbase. It should be fairly easy to avoid other players for the most part and just jump away when you see a criminal status player within your area, there is going to be so many different ways to play the game, plus all players will have access to every ship any other player has it will just take time to get what you want.

WoW you can buy anything with gold, rare raid mounts, best gear, while wow is different to SC the main goals for certain ppl is having those mounts and BiS gear, and as with SC you still will need skill to use that equipment properly, so you can have that bigger ship and maybe be able to put up a better fight or something but someone can always beat you.

The combat is not that easy in SC you do need a fair amount of practice, especially hitting those small ships and even nps are running around in those hammerhead ships but all ships have a weakness in fire arcs and such.

While im not too bothered either way i would be fine with starter packages after launch to have things like cutlass/freelancer at most to help new players into the game and providing more income, but nothing much more than that so long term backers patience to be rewarded, but the optional sub/euc and game packages should be more than enough income.

Keep moving those goalposts while also being totally wrong at the same time.

tell me why im wrong, wow, gw2, poe, every game has some sort of p2w/skip mechanic, even if its not official by the game you can still use money for pretty much everything.

[Illuminance]

tell me why im wrong, wow, gw2, poe, every game has some sort of p2w/skip mechanic, even if its not official by the game you can still use money for pretty much everything.

WoW has the level skip and I guess you could argue token->gold can buy you gear, GW2 has the ability to buy gold for gear, but there's basically nothing that exists in PoE that is a "skip" or "win" mechanic. Also "every game has p2w" ... ????... I mean, maybe you believe this if you've played like 5 games in your lifetime but there is a huge number of games without this...