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Star Citizen's lead Chris Roberts downplays community's pay to win concerns: "You win by having fun"
- Thread starter Horse Armour
- Start date
Makes sense, since the game has been playable for so long already and Destiny 2 showed that resetting people's stats for a new release opens up a chance in the playerbase losing interest.
However, this still seems like the 1% bringing their disparity over to the game world. That timed cap will do absolutely nothing to stop it.
However, this still seems like the 1% bringing their disparity over to the game world. That timed cap will do absolutely nothing to stop it.
By the logic that identifies this as pay to win, buying a product earlier than someone else is pay to win.
The game is available to everyone. There's no barrier of entry now that won't be at "launch." In MMO environment, those who get in early have an advantage. As a matter of fact, it's very likely that making money will be much easier later than now when there will be more money and available activities.
No matter when you get into a MMO, there will always be people that got in before you, or have more time than you, and have more than you do. That's how this kind of games work.
If you're that worried about others having more currency than you do in a MMO, you'll never have fun.
The game is available to everyone. There's no barrier of entry now that won't be at "launch." In MMO environment, those who get in early have an advantage. As a matter of fact, it's very likely that making money will be much easier later than now when there will be more money and available activities.
No matter when you get into a MMO, there will always be people that got in before you, or have more time than you, and have more than you do. That's how this kind of games work.
If you're that worried about others having more currency than you do in a MMO, you'll never have fun.
It's strange that the pay-to-win concerns only came out now.
It has been pay-to-win from the very beginning, the worst being giving lifetime ship insurance to Kickstarter backers. So if there's a space fight between Kickstarter Backer vs Standard Edition Scrub, the Scrub has much more to lose than the Backer.
And then there's the whole thing where people pay thousands of dollars for spaceships...
It has been pay-to-win from the very beginning, the worst being giving lifetime ship insurance to Kickstarter backers. So if there's a space fight between Kickstarter Backer vs Standard Edition Scrub, the Scrub has much more to lose than the Backer.
And then there's the whole thing where people pay thousands of dollars for spaceships...
This is one of the biggest misconceptions on the game. Anyone can have insurance at any time. The backer simply doesn't need to pay for it overtime. Non-backers will simply have to pay for insurance over time, and if you can afford a ship, you can afford its insurance.
In the scenario you describe, both have exactly the same to lose because both have access to insurance. If you go out with an uninsured ship, the joke's on you.
Lifetime insurance simply means you have one less expense to take care of, which isn't that big of an advantage.
25k a day multiplied by however many days until release is exactly how much money some of these whales will have on launch day. Anyone who doesn't think this is a problem is smoking crack or is named Chris Roberts. It's disgusting, but it's par for the course with game.
You don't need to be a "whale" to start making credits. Anyone with a $25 pledge can.
If you buy an online game with progression earlier, you start progressing earlier.
Wait, are we talking about real money to pay for this insurance or some sort of in game money?
You can literally buy your way to the daily cap, which is why the cap was removed in the first place. Whales had more stuff to melt than they could convert.
No one is going to keep up merely by playing, let's not pretend otherwise. This isn't about play time, it's about buying your way to the top.
They had a cap on the total amount of pre-release money you could horde, and they recently just removed it and let people exchange real money purchased items for in-game money. Basically, you can now accrue near unlimited funds before the game is even released.
How is the ingame economy handled? Auction houses, player to player trading , etc?
Most of us have known it's P2W for a long time. This one, combined with Robert's response, is just the the nail in the coffin of anyone defending it as anything else. They're not fooling anyone anymore.
They're designing the economy just like the real world, which means all of those things. Everything that money does for you in the real world it will do for you in-game. The rich will get richer and the plebs will be playing catch up for the life of the game.
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OP
OP
Pandering to the whales is the only technique they have for ensuring the continuing existence of their company since there is no other way they can raise enough money to continue development given the fact that they're burning through tens of millions each year on hundreds of developers whilst accomplishing very little with all that manpower.
This is really really dumb. At the very least everyone should start with a minimum of in game currency. Even if there are people walking in with massive expensive ships already.
How does EVE Online deal with this? We know that the game has its own economy.
I don't understand the thing about uninsured ships. What happens if your ship is uninsured?
I don't understand the thing about uninsured ships. What happens if your ship is uninsured?
I just find it amusing that they clearly do not care about their optics and seem completely willing to keep harpooning their whales as hard as possible.
I mean some whales goes as far as defend these obviously scummy practices, just let them get burnt I say. I hope Chris Roberts gets nailed if he doesn't produce a proper product after everything that was said and done but I won't be shocked if people will defend him.
I disagree here. Surely, people have to disagree with this.
Well, whenever this fucking game comes out, it's economy can be a digital case study of why unregulated capitalism is a terrible idea
I can't wait to watch the drama unfold when... I mean if, this game ever comes out. It'll be glorious and more fun than playing, I bet. I love space sims, but I smelled this disaster from the beginning and I'm happy I've never put a penny towards this game.
I disagree with a lot of things in the development of SC. Funding model, things like this. But the game is technically really impressive. You obviously understand a lot better than most. But it's obvious to see just at the most basic level of the mechanics of it. The new stuff about the Object Container System is awesome.
I mean if nothing else than just the persistence of real-time shared ships in which you can move around on, in X, Y, Z, while said ships is also moving on all axis. Being able to seamlessly transition from space, to air, to ground without loading etc. Is just massively impressive.
It's a Star Citizen thread on Era with a dubious premise, we've all seen this before.
We know exactly where this conversation started, and we know exactly how this thread will end. With the usual suspects crawling out of the woodwork to shout "SCAM" from the rooftops, downplay the current state of the game and wail about how people could dare support such greed.
It's been P2W since they started selling ships for hundreds and thousands of dollars. Has anyone really believed that a $1,000 USD ship is going to be easily affordable with in game currency?
The grind is going to be crazy real for people starting on the ground floor.
The economy has been fucked from day zero.
The grind is going to be crazy real for people starting on the ground floor.
The economy has been fucked from day zero.
In EVE you can use real money to buy an in-game item called a Pilot License Extension (PLEX). Players can freely trade PLEX for in-game currency, or activate one to get a month of game time. This means real-world rich players can use PLEX to get in-game money and in-game rich players can buy PLEX to play for "free" (or only at the expense of their time).
Some wars in EVE have been funded by real-world rich people buying large amounts of PLEX ($100k+) and using those in-game funds to cover alliance losses. People are generally OK with it because a good war generates content for everyone to enjoy.
I don't think anyone knows what's happening with insurance in SC because, like most of the systems in that game, it doesn't exist yet. So far everyone assumes insurance will be cheap (funnily enough, like it is in EVE) but we don't know that for a fact yet.
Wait, your progression carries over for full release? That's such a weird way to handle things.
OP shitting up his own thread? Interesting tactic.
The business side of this game definitely deserves scrutiny and criticism. But the game and tech they're creating is clearly insanely impressive.