[Megathread] Star Citizen

[masterhorus8]

The Voyager Direct stuff are ship components and shit like that, right?

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not fully aware of all the details about the shit that they are selling, but from where I’m standing, it’s seems like a pretty much like a hell of a nasty p2w system.

Regardless the limitations, you are still trading real cash for in-game fire power, power that I’m assuming that may even be used against other players, that’s something that I already detest on free 2 player games, attach a 50$ price tag and start selling even before releasing the damn game and it becomes even worse…

Yeah...there's 0 defending of VD as a whole. It's bad. And one of the more recent SC subreddit threads agrees with you as well.

The only saving grace that it has IMO, is the rental feature. You can earn rental credits by doing races, dogfights (vs players or ai), or fps. And those credits can be used to buy 1 month rental versions of the weapons and ships. But everything else about the VD should burn.

[masterhorus8]

There shouldn't be bloody microtransactions in a game still in Alpha. Simple as that. It's cash grabbing and there's no other way of putting it.

It's literally just a way of bleeding more money out of the project in case it nosedives. Nothing more.

Yes, I agree. Fuck microtransactions. VD needs to go (except for the rental part, that can stay).

[Malibutomi]

I don't mind cosmetic ones but not in an Alpha just no.

I mean I wish they weren't a thing at all but eh times change. Cosmetics I don't mind, Cosmetic lootboxes I don't mind but still not fond of and anything P2W in a full price game can get the hell out. As can putting any microtransactions in a game still in development.

CIG should be focusing on the game. Not making their bank account bigger. And the excuse of "to fund development" when they have god knows how much money isn't valid in this case. It's an alpha. Stop focusing on a fallback plan and try and make the game you want to.

It's funny reading "CIG spends infinite millions per month, they are broke" argument one day, and "CIG has god knows how much money they shouldn't take any more on the other.

Honestly i don't care if the player who blows up my ship grind for his or bought it, the result is the same.

[zealo]

Id say it mostly hinges upon whether they keep the current microtransaction model or not once it finally gets to the point of moving into beta, and how grindy it becomes to acquire combat focused ship models, e.g fighters, whenever that beta and later full release happens.

If they keep the planned model of having ships acting as base hulls you can get back reliably, with guns, equipment, and so on acting more like consumables for ships that'll be gone after death, any advantage from the current shop will get cleaned out of the system pretty quickly, if the shop is removed or revamped to cosmetics only.

If not, well, it'll go full P2W.

[masterhorus8]

@masterhorus8 is there any way to compare how powerful are the stuff they are selling compared to the default starter stuff? I mean, I can even understand if this stuff are just slightly better than the starting hardware, or simply just as good, just with different models.

Edited: Although, considering some of those prices…

There is actually a huge limit on the weaponry that can be used on ships. Everything that is being sold in VD are the standard versions of said weaponry. Nothing special about them and all ships use these same choices (except for some of the alien ships).

The guns in SC have size limitations. Size 1 (S1), Size 2 (S3)....Size 10 (S10). Each mount on a ship can only go up to a certain size, and those mounts cannot be changed (yet). On top of weapon sizes, certain other features "use" a size when being applied to a mount, such as a gimbal. If you gimbal a weapon mount, the weapon size is lowered by 1. So a size 3 mount with a gimbal can only have a size 2 gun on it OR a fixed size 3 gun. Between each weapon size, I think the avg power difference was somewhere around 50-60% increase when going up by 1 size. another size affecting upgrade is a dual weapon mount. Only one for one specific ship is being sold atm, but it is supposedly planned as a general mount attachment. As of my last check on it, these will use 1 weapon size, but then let you attach two guns of the next size down. So a S3 mount with a dual weapon mount would let you use 2x S2 guns. Which you could gimbal the dual weapon mount, lowering it again by 1 size, so on a S3 gimbaled dual weapon mount, you would have 2x S1 weapons.

The next biggest differences between weapons are the type of projectiles and the fire-rate. Energy weapons do not use ammunition but do not do much damage until the shields are down. Physical projectiles have a set amount of ammunition but ignore a good chunk of the shields. For fire-rate, the slower the time between shots, the more powerful it typically is.

On top of all of that, there is also power usage and heating of the barrel. The slower fire rate guns tend to overheat if they're fired too rapidly, while the gattling gun style weapons tend to take longer to heat up. And then the power usage of each gun means that some weapons, you just can't have too many of on your ship if you don't have a good enough power cell (I have not read much into the power stuff since they had been talking about it relatively recently), which everything on your ship uses. So if your guns are too draining, RIP shields/engines.

TL;DR, the guns that you can buy are standard guns that come on the ships already, and there aren't really any specific guns within the same size that are purely better than another in every situation. The ships themselves are more limiting than the weaponry. The gimbal vs fixed weapons debate is another thing in and of itself, but the biggest limitation factor overall are the individual mount sizes, not the guns themselves.

[CogsNCocks]

1. No point getting your panties in a bunch about microtransactions when no one really knows how it's going to turn out. I doubt the devs 100% sure at this point in time. Yeah, I know you haters are running out of stuff to critize Star Citizen about, so it's no surprise that we are talking about microtransactions now. At least your coming to terms now with the fact that yes there is a game coming, and yes it's going to be something a bit special.

2. Star Citizen is a bit unique in sense due it's scale, and there will be so many roles to fill that the guy with bigger guns won't matter if you're running a mining operation. You'll be wanting to hire that guy to protect your shipping vessels, not necessarily be threatened by him, who cares where he got his big guns if he can do the job. Maybe you will be exploring on the frontiers of the game world scouting resources where you rarely encouter other players, who cares about the guy with the theoretical damage output advantage who you will never meet. It's not like you'll be thrown into an arena and murdered 10 seconds later by someone who threw money at the screen like Battlefront II.

3. Most players will part of an organsiation, and so too will benefit from whatever advantages the wealthier players in their organisations have, and will also be likely depending on them to work their way up the ladder to some degree.

4. So just talking about the game like it's another here today, gone tomorrow, AAA game and bickering over whether it's cosmetic, lootboxes,p2w, or whatever and your stilll not really grasping what Star Citizen is all about. Star Citizen is in league of its own.

[zealo]

1. No point getting your panties in a bunch about microtransactions when no one really knows how it's going to turn out. I doubt the devs 100% sure at this point in time. Yeah, I know you haters are running out of stuff to critize Star Citizen about, so it's no surprise that we are talking about microtransactions now. At least your coming to terms now with the fact that yes there is a game coming, and yes it's going to be something a bit special.

2. Star Citizen is a bit unique in sense due it's scale, and there will be so many roles to fill that the guy with bigger guns won't matter if you're running a mining operation. You'll be wanting to hire that guy to protect your shipping vessels, not necessarily be threatened by him, who cares where he got his big guns if he can do the job. Maybe you will be exploring on the frontiers of the game world scouting resources where you rarely encouter other players, who cares about the guy with the theoretical damage output advantage who you will never meet. It's not like you'll be thrown into an arena and murdered 10 seconds later by someone who threw money at the screen like Battlefront II.

3. Most players will part of an organsiation, and so too will benefit from whatever advantages the wealthier players in their organisations have, and will also be likely depending on them to work their way up the ladder to some degree.

4. So just talking about the game like it's another here today, gone tomorrow, AAA game and bickering over whether it's cosmetic, lootboxes,p2w, or whatever and your stilll not really grasping what Star Citizen is all about. Star Citizen is in league of its own.

Hater is a funny word. It usually gets applied to absolutely everyone around here who have concerns, regardless of whether what they're saying is merely being critical, or based upon some desire of wanting it to fail for some reason. Talking about the monetization model they're running with their cash shop is not being a hater.

I've been in this thread for years now engaging with individuals who keep touting the "scam!" line of thought, I still don't think it is that, and that they're actually making a game with the money they're getting.

Doesn't mean I suddenly turn into a hater if I have concerns about CIG mismanagement when major updates are getting delayed this long, or if they'll dial down the equipment cash shop eventually.

[CogsNCocks]

snap

You're the one who dismissed the game as vapourware, which is obviously wrong. Your predictions have already been BTFO, which sucks for you, so who cares what else you have to say about Star Citizen because your bets were hedged on the game failing from the begining. Let us hope you don't apply your stunning analytical and fortune-telling abilites to your personal life or you may just end up living in a dumpster. Your post reveals that you still don't actually comprehend the scope of the game, or my post for that matter and your criticism aren't even against Star Citizen but actually against an imaginary strawman that lives inside your head. Take a break from your Anime, lolis and cartoon cats and rejoin us back in reality.

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Hater is a funny word. It usually gets applied to absolutely everyone around here who have concerns, regardless of whether what they're saying is merely being critical, or based upon some desire of wanting it to fail for some reason. Talking about the monetization model they're running with their cash shop is not being a hater.

I've been in this thread for years now engaging with individuals who keep touting the "scam!" line of thought, I still don't think it is that, and that they're actually making a game with the money they're getting.

Doesn't mean I suddenly turn into a hater if I have concerns about CIG mismanagement when major updates are getting delayed this long.

I never called you a hater, interesting that you thought it was directed at you. Yeah it was a bit incendiary, but that's just for my own amusement more than anything. Carry on.

[Malibutomi]

Sounds kind of similar to Freelancer, which is pretty good.
But if they are indeed on pair with standard gear, then it’s something I can live with despite still not really enjoying the whole idea of it.



Yawn* I was actually surprised how long we managed to talk about something without someone jumping with the usual “derk a derp haters kek!” bullshit, make sure to give yourself a cookie mate.

Although I really like the way how you start by saying that no on really knows how it’s going to turn out and procced right away to tell us about what people should feel threatened about or not… but yeah, why would people care about the possibility of getting completely stomped on forced one sided battles against other players who simply threw dollars at the screen ~ ridiculous! SC is in his own league, a magnificent league, the best shit ever… even despite the fact of having no clue how it will even actually turn out like, as just admitted.

True unconditional love is such a beautiful thing.

Really? Stomped on forced one sided battles mate?

This is not COD or War Thunder where everything is about facing the others, and they "might" buy a gun you don't have.

Just a few points:
First of all as in EVE everyone starts in the safe systems...if you venture out you know the risks...and as i said it doesn't matter how your ship is blown if it happens...one guy with big guns or 3 guys with smaller guns.
Also everything will be obtainable in game so everyone can get stuff. They don't sell any extra powerful weaons or ships, just the ones you can get in the game for "free".
Big ships needs a lot of crews, maintenance is high, and if they blow up the insurance takes longer the bigger the ship. Small ships minutes/hours big ships days even weeks. So just as in EVE imho the big guns will be held safely until org battles or something like that happens.
Lastly this is still a skill based game, bigger guns/ship not necessarily means winning.

[1001]

Also everything will be obtainable in game so everyone can get stuff. They don't sell any extra powerful weaons or ships, just the ones you can get in the game for "free".

Earning them in game is kind of irrelevant though. The point is that some people can start with them immediately while other people have to spend time earning credits to buy them, and while they're doing those jobs they are more vulnerable because they aren't kitted out so well. For all we know the hulls could be reasonably cheap and the real cost lies in the modules which would give an even larger advantage to paying customers.

Big ships needs a lot of crews, maintenance is high, and if they blow up the insurance takes longer the bigger the ship. Small ships minutes/hours big ships days even weeks.

Or NPC crews. We don't know how high the maintenance is, more importantly we don't know how high it is in comparison to smaller ships.
The insurance wait is not so drastic, you can simply pay UEC to speed things up by 4x or whatever it is.

Lastly this is still a skill based game, bigger guns/ship not necessarily means winning.

That's the intention, will it be the reality though? Until the ships are finished, ie all features and mechanics implemented, it's nothing more than conjecture.

It would be nice if there was more detail from CIG's camp on how all of these things will function, it would save so many arguments and speculative discussions

[masterhorus8]

That's the intention, will it be the reality though? Until the ships are finished, ie all features and mechanics implemented, it's nothing more than conjecture.

Regarding this bit, there is indeed a pretty big difference between the $170 Saber and the start $45 Aurora. The TTK is pretty high, and last time I played, just high enough that the shields would easily recharge before being able to hit again. On the other hand, I have seen a skill player demolish everyone with the starter ship, but I'm pretty sure everyone else weren't exactly the best.

[Malibutomi]

Earning them in game is kind of irrelevant though. The point is that some people can start with them immediately while other people have to spend time earning credits to buy them, and while they're doing those jobs they are more vulnerable because they aren't kitted out so well. For all we know the hulls could be reasonably cheap and the real cost lies in the modules which would give an even larger advantage to paying customers.

That is really a pointless debate. By this logic noones allowed to play the game sooner then you - if you start later for some reason - because they would have an advantage. Or noone should be allowed to play it more than you because they gain an advantage? What is the difference, if you play 2-3 hours on the first day, a nolifer play 22 and on the next day you log in still to your small starter ship and he already comes in a Hornet and blow your ass up?Is it make you feel better that he spent a day and night grinding? You won't even know, but your ship is still blown up. You just gonna say fkin pay to win.
Also as you so easily pop the point "noone knows until it's finished and we see how it works out" on other topics, that applies here as well.

Or NPC crews. We don't know how high the maintenance is, more importantly we don't know how high it is in comparison to smaller ships.
The insurance wait is not so drastic, you can simply pay UEC to speed things up by 4x or whatever it is.

Well we just know they said the maintenance will behigh, fuel costs will be huge, and they couldn't even dock anywhere with the big ships.

That's the intention, will it be the reality though? Until the ships are finished, ie all features and mechanics implemented, it's nothing more than conjecture.

It would be nice if there was more detail from CIG's camp on how all of these things will function, it would save so many arguments and speculative discussions

Agree on that until things are finished, and nothing set in stone we don't know sure things. That's why i don't get the pages long debate about it.

Just to be clear: ofc everyone should voice their opinions and criticism. I just think the several pages debate is pointless when we don't know any facts basically.

[Miyani]

That is really a pointless debate. By this logic noones allowed to play the game sooner then you - if you start later for some reason - because they would have an advantage. Or noone should be allowed to play it more than you because they gain an advantage? What is the difference, if you play 2-3 hours on the first day, a nolifer play 22 and on the next day you log in still to your small starter ship and he already comes in a Hornet and blow your ass up?Is it make you feel better that he spent a day and night grinding? You won't even know, but your ship is still blown up. You just gonna say fkin pay to win.
Also as you so easily pop the point "noone knows until it's finished and we see how it works out" on other topics, that applies here as well.

Indeed, the whole pay to win cause someone has a ship before them makes no sense to me. This isn't a pvp only game and there will be safe starting zones. Some of the bigger ships like the javelin wont even have turrets when the game goes live, they have said they wont come installed with them and will be up to the player to equip them first. A lot of the medium/bigger ships also come with downgraded weapons, so size 5 turrets but only come with size 4 installed. Voyages direct is kinda meh for what it offers, i have a friend who spent a lot decking out one of his fighters in weapons from voyager only for those weapons to later go through a balance patch and be worse than the standard ones the ship came with in the first place.

People that complain about people starting with bigger ships than them make no sense to me, whats the difference with this and someone joining the game 1-2 years after it goes live and encountering a player who has played since launch? What do they want to happen? maybe yearly resets on the anniversary date where everyone loses all their ships and saved UEC and has to start with an aurora again each year so new joiners don't feel left out?

Besides funding for the game the other ships will allow people to spread out and enter different niches so not everyone on day one will be running errands in an aurora/mustang in the same area for a couple of hours... I always hated that rush when a new expansion came out in say WOW and all of a sudden thousands of people were stuck in the same area doing the same quest and making it impossible to progress with that one questline that had a queue just for a chance to kill the spawned mob.

As stated starting with a big ship won't be all fun and games for everyone either, the maintenance/fuel and crewing will be a nightmare come the first days of launch. People won't be able to afford NPCs and wont have the best equipment available. Try taking your no turret javelin into deep space with zero crew and you are in for a bad time. People that wish to prey on the new players even if fully decked out in the best of the best equipment will have t deal with the UEE NPC defence in safe high sec zones. Maybe they will kill the new player before defence arrives maybe, but they will not last long as a pirate in high sec space to make it worth their while. (reminds me of WoW when a max lvl player would try sneaking into a starting zone to target new players, sometimes they would kill them sometimes not a lot of the time i'd see them slaughtered by a guard or a max level player of an opposing faction). My only wish is if in a starter area or with only so much play time and your ship is destroyed by griefers that you can get a replacement quicker at maybe no charge but this will have to be done properly so it doesn't just include idiots that flew into a building upon take off for the first time, something i am guilty off doing myself on more than one occasion ><

By the time a new player is ready to venture out of high sec they will have enough funds saved to buy/upgrade their ships to deal with pirates even if those pirates had previously brought/upgraded their weapons. The pirates will still be situated in lawless areas and be more prone to coming under attack themselves from other pirates/aliens and have most likely incurred larger monetary problems just trying to always keep repaired and ready, so will ultimately probably equal out their standings with someone who hasn't had t deal with that.

The voyager cap on buying in game money has not even been established yet, they may change values of it or even still get rid of the idea completely. It was just a method they were looking into for future funding of the game and they have stated multiple times that the figure wont be high enough to interfere with none paying players the figure will probably be enough for some fuel and ammo and will have a cap on how much can be brought each month.

I'am sure if the complainer can come up with an amazing way to fund the game after launch instead of you know just complaining then CIG will be all ears and happy to hear them out. But complainers very rarely actually help out in such cases and would just rather moan at what they don't like than offer potential solutions for what they would like instead.

[thyNoobthyPrey]

A very interesting discussion about microtransactions in Star Citizen. Although I do think the pro Star Citizen chaps have the upper hand on this one

[thyNoobthyPrey]

Well no they don't.

They are defending really scummy practices along with borderline P2W mechanics.

Not to mention throwing them in during an Alpha test which is just blatant cash grabbing.

The "pro Star Citizen" bunch are the part of the community I'd want to avoid personally. As with any game community. Because they are the people who act like their game is the greatest gift to mankind and flawless and any critique you post is "hating or bashing". It's a rancid side of a community imo and one that causes good games to go down the tube in the future.

No game is flawless. No game is perfect.

No the rancid side of the community is the one who hates, and bashes everything and makes it their point in life to find flaws in others work while creating nothing of value themselves. Like literally spending years in thread bashing someone elses work lol, it's just pathetic.

[thyNoobthyPrey]

Who here is bashing other than a couple of people?

Hate to tell you but bashing the game is just as bad as blindly defending a game. Critique is needed. Don't pretend that some of the critique presented in this forum is "bashing" because that's just grasping at straws.

So both sides are rancid. People bashing a game without fair critique are just as bad as those defending awful practices put into the game and like the game is the greatest gift to mankind.

Right now those people are acting like this game is already out when it's just a really early Alpha build. Praising it and acting like it's Game of the Year 2017 although ironically the game isn't fully out yet so it couldn't even get that award.

They are defending it because you have to admit, there have been some detractors that don't exactly have benign intentions for the project and rub their hands together in glee at thought of the project failing. So when it looks like people are just looking for any old excuse to bash the game, since alot of their original claims have been proven to be nonsense, you're going to get thrown into that camp by default. It's probably best to see how the game turns out or at least wait until closer to release if you haven't already thrown your hat into the ring by buying into the project yourself. You have to see how their monitization model fits within the context of the game before judging it, and like other posters have mentioned, the huge scope of Star Citizen puts it in a different category than say Overwatch or Battlefront II. Personally I think at CIG should adopt a subscription and currency token model like WoW for the MMO side of things and not try to rely on microtransactions to support the game but we will have to wait and see.

[thyNoobthyPrey]

And no it should really not go for a sub model. A modern sub game is a recipe for failure. Name me 2 big games outside of WoW and FF14 that use a sub by default.

Big games is the keyword, a game can only succeed with a subscription model if it reaches critical mass, and I do believe Star Citizen has a good shot at reaching that point. There are other benefits to having a subscription model like keeping out the riff-raff, multiplayer community based games that are too affordable for everyone really do have extremely toxic communities.

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I disagree.

The game has been delayed consistently, managed poorly, the guy incharge hasn't got the best track record other than 1 good game among other things.

Considering the pedigree of the developers working on the game, if the game is taking this long to make then that's how long it needs, it was going to take that long anyway. I will say that I don't like how they promised release dates that were then delayed, I think they shouldn't have given dates at all except for within a much smaller time frame, but then again announcing release dates is a good way to get the attention of the media.

'1 good game among other things' isn't really fair way to describe the achievements of Chris Roberts, more like 22 releases including expansions, with a lot more than 1 good game in there that's for sure. Not to mention the ten movies that were released that he produced. Talk about misrepresenting someone, jesus.

[thyNoobthyPrey]

And no it should really not go for a sub model. A modern sub game is a recipe for failure. Name me 2 big games outside of WoW and FF14 that use a sub by default.

Big games is the keyword, a game can only succeed with a subscription model if it reaches critical mass, and I do believe Star Citizen has a good shot at reaching that point. There are other benefits to having a subscription model like keeping out the riff-raff, multiplayer community based games that are too affordable for everyone really do have extremely toxic communities.

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I disagree.

The game has been delayed consistently, managed poorly, the guy incharge hasn't got the best track record other than 1 good game among other things.

I agree that they should have handled the release date annoucement thing a bit better, a lot better actually, they should never have given any release dates until it was obvious they would have something to release.

Now, considering the pedigree of the developers working on the game, Star Citizen is simply taking as long as it needs to get where it wants to be, nothing is going to speed up development when you already have some of the best guys in the business working on your game. And as for Chris Roberts who has 22 video game release under his belt with more than one good game in there, that's for sure. Not to mention the ten movies he's produced. I think you're misrepresenting him unfairly to be honest.

[Kazgrel]

I've a coworker who's obsessed with this game, but soon as the convo brings up things like his organization purchasing ships to the tune of several hundred USD, my face contorts into a meme-like "dafuq?" expression. Given what I know of the game from him, I've taken to the moniker Scam Citizen. I think it's fair, honestly; the game isn't even a live release (still an "alpha") yet sporting all sorts of "preorder bonuses" that are no more than cash shop items for a game that isn't even officially released.

While I think my opinion of the game is a little unfair due to the info I have being through someone else (although said someone else is very much a fanboy of the game), it is what it is, and until the game is an actual release in 2037, I'll remain very skeptical, and they (the devs) will remain far from my wallet.

[thyNoobthyPrey]

I disagree.

The game has been delayed consistently, managed poorly and the guy incharge hasn't got the best track record other than 1 good game among other things.

The game is open to fair criticism. Throwing microtransactions in during the Alpha phase is greedy and cash grabby.

And no it should really not go for a sub model. A modern sub game is a recipe for failure. Name me 2 big games outside of WoW and FF14 that use a sub by default.

The sub model works when a game reaches critical mass in popularity like the two you mentioned. I think Star Citizen certainly has potentional to be critically successfully.

As for Chris Roberts track record.... 22 video game releases not including Star Citizen and producer of ten movies that have cast people like Nicolas Cage and Morgan Freeman. Yeah terrible track record, what an absolute failure. Hope you're going to share your brilliant achievements if you think that isn't the best track record as you say.