The combat looks good, both space and personal. I hope the game isn't too focused on just the combat. It would be cool if there were a lot of non-combat activities like MegaTraveller, SWG, and the like so it doesn't turn into a very pretty pvp gankfest. It would make the universe feel a lot more alive to have people doing things other than just discharging high energy weapons.
Some have expressed their fear that this game will be "Sims in Space" with NOT enough fighting and action. Just one more example that no matter what design choices CIG takes, not everyone will be happy as people expect often vastly different things from this game.
You WILL have more things to do than fighting, especially on the exploration, racing and high level economic side. There is no SWG level of crafting planned at the moment, alas. I look forward to very good NPC AI however.
So your argument against them Whaling is that they "only" have ~700k people allready who have paid roughly twice the price of other B2P games like GW2 for this?
Yeah, about that...
>>>
You DO know the difference between buying a game and supporting a crowdfunding project, do you ? If one wants SC at the minimum price, it was available at 20 $ at some point ... less than half of what you pay for a typical new game. At the moment its available for as low as 35 $, maybe 2/3 price of your typical box game.
Yeah, about that ...
Have fun
Nice deflection avay fromt the point.
My point was that backers are NOT only paying $35, now, are they? Thus they have INDEED managed to get a nice bunch of whales, which was what we were aguing, not how little you in theory could pay.
To adress the other topic you bring up, it being crowdfunding, I dont see how the model benefits the players if they end up paying much more for the product than they would have, had it been made by a regular publisher.
Not sure why the hype for this game. We have EVE and its a true sandbox space shooter.
I play EVE for 10 years now and let me tell you .. Star Citizen is quite different from EVE. In EVE you are a "ship" (and no, the avatar in his captains quarters does not count), in Star Citizen you will be ... you. Whatever you want to be.
EVE is a massively multiplayer game, Star Citizen will be a multiplayer game (no massively). No 4000 player battles in SC ... with all the advantages and disadvantages this brings. I expect immersion factor to be higher in Star Citizen, without fofo suiciding Goons etc.
EVE is a tactical game (at least until we get EVE Valkyrie), while Star Citizen is a twitch skill based joystick flying space sim.
My point was that backers are NOT only paying $35, now, are they? Thus they have INDEED managed to get a nice bunch of whales, which was what we were aguing, not how little you in theory could pay.
To adress the other topic you bring up, it being crowdfunding, I dont see how the model benefits the players if they end up paying much more for the product than they would have, had it been made by a regular publisher.
My point is that backers pay as much or as little as they want. If they want to pay only a small amount of money, they were able to get Star Citizen for as low as 20 bucks. CIG had something for everyone. If you WANT more, you can pay more ... but its not CIG forcing you to buy it. All that extra stuff - its not needed for the game. But its nice to have a SC T-Shirt ;-) Just as its nice to have an xkcd or Firefly T-Shirt.
A few weeks or months into the game after launch - depending on the amount of personal playtime - anyone can have basically the same in game assets, no matter if (s)he paid 20 bucks or 15.000 bucks. Everyone can get anything for in game cash - no real life cash needed. And no item will be available for ONLY real life cash, thats a design principle of SC.
Crowdfunding benefits the player because he gets the game he wants. NOT the game the publishers want him to want. Its HIS choice. Its not a choice made for him by force-feeding him the product of the newest marketing campaign of EA or Ubisoft through ten different media channels. And to be able to choose, we - the backers - are willing to crowdfund the project of our choice with an amount of money we personally feel comfortable with. And i stress the words ... OUR CHOICE.
I'm often amazed by the level of hate this project receives. TBH I don't even see what causes it, just about everything they show looks good, everything on paper sounds good, it's just a matter of delivering on it. You'd think by some of these posts, they'd have already failed in that regard.
The world is full of people with great ideas. Only VERY few of them are able to turn that into working reality. This is even more true in the world of games.
Any developer knows that to secure funding you need to have at least a working prototype as proof of concept before having the slightest chance to raise money. This is for a reason. Many great ideas simply fail on a practical level. Investing in such a project is simply foolish unless you are ready for a very high level of risk on your investment. Hell, even with a promising proof of concept many games fails to make it through development into something playable, but at least it gets rid of the worst offenders.
So, yeah, they kinda HAVE failed to deliver. When I backed "The Repopulation", it was based off thier videos of actual main gameplay experience with the prototype. When I backed by second game "At the Gates" it was after watching a gameply video of actual main gameplay. Touching this before they have a prototype showing off the stuff that is not trivial (trivial being space flight, standard fps stuff, stuff that has been done so many times as to not posing a risk on thier own) but the actual main seamless gameplay experince they are promising, I will allow myself due doubts.
Could the game turn out great? Sure. But there is really nothing hard to support that as of yet. It is not hate, but a call for cooler heads to prevail. Crowndfunding should not equal "easy money" for the devs. They should still be required to deliver proof of concept on the hard areas of gameplay and not get away with just flashing us shiny graphics.
My point is that backers pay as much or as little as they want. If they want to pay only a small amount of money, they were able to get Star Citizen for as low as 20 bucks. CIG had something for everyone. If you WANT more, you can pay more ... but its not CIG forcing you to buy it. All that extra stuff - its not needed for the game. But its nice to have a SC T-Shirt ;-) Just as its nice to have an xkcd or Firefly T-Shirt.
I granted you that, yes, you can pay what you want. Yet you are not willing, in spite of the evidence, to agree that RSI indeed have managed to get thier hands on a lot of players willing to pay a lot more, aka. "whales".
I guess you are trying to use the "crowdfuding" argument to say that this is normal and acceptable, and not whaling. I counterargue that whailing is 100% about making the whale feeling good about spending all that money, to keep the income flowing. And in that RSI have succeded.
Remember Titan? If Blizzard can create Vaporware, I would say anything is possible.
Not that I expect this to happen here, but my motto is: never say never!
Until a game is produced, it technically is vaporware.
Blizzard can afford to create vaporware. RSI really can not.
When Blizzard fails, they can afford to pull out and cancel the project.
When RSI knows they have failed, they have to continue making incredible trailers, selling ships, and acting as if nothing is wrong because that's the only thing they can do. Even if they know it's completely hopeless they can't do anything but to continue on with delivering the failure until the studio runs out of money.
I granted you that, yes, you can pay what you want. Yet you are not willing, in spite of the evidence, to agree that RSI indeed have managed to get thier hands on a lot of players willing to pay a lot more, aka. "whales".
I guess you are trying to use the "crowdfuding" argument to say that this is normal and acceptable, and not whaling. I counterargue that whailing is 100% about making the whale feeling good about spending all that money, to keep the income flowing. And in that RSI have succeded.
RSI / CIG is supported via crowdfunding by people that have spent more than the average price of a game. However, that is in 99,99 % of the cases NOT the same as a "whale" in online and mobile gaming. People have willingly given that money to help change the gaming industry. Its not only about this single game "Star Citizen".
Check out e.g. this article that digs deeper into what a "whale" is.
And then try to guess again how many of those 690.000 gamers have spend MORE than 100 $ A MONTH for the last 2 years. Or up to 100.000 $ like in some Chinese games.
You will also see - by reading a bit the available literature - that the average "whale" in the West is NOT the super PvP guy aiming for the almighty gear combo (that you will most likely see in Asia). Its more often than not a guild leader trying to enhance his guild's standing by outfitting his comrades to a degree higher than the average. If you read the CIG forums, you will also know that most people with many ships plan to lend them out to their organisation buddies - and this was usually the main reason to have more than one ship in the first place. Furthermore ... those that bought big expensive ships like the Javelin usually did it for their guild/organisation ... NOT to have a solo pwnmobile. You even find examples for such guilds here on the recruitment posts of Star Citizen subforum of mmorpg.com.
We seem to interpret the "evidence" somewhat differently ;-)
Comments
Some have expressed their fear that this game will be "Sims in Space" with NOT enough fighting and action. Just one more example that no matter what design choices CIG takes, not everyone will be happy as people expect often vastly different things from this game.
You WILL have more things to do than fighting, especially on the exploration, racing and high level economic side. There is no SWG level of crafting planned at the moment, alas. I look forward to very good NPC AI however.
Have fun
Not sure why the hype for this game. We have EVE and its a true sandbox space shooter.
Nice deflection avay fromt the point.
My point was that backers are NOT only paying $35, now, are they? Thus they have INDEED managed to get a nice bunch of whales, which was what we were aguing, not how little you in theory could pay.
To adress the other topic you bring up, it being crowdfunding, I dont see how the model benefits the players if they end up paying much more for the product than they would have, had it been made by a regular publisher.
I play EVE for 10 years now and let me tell you .. Star Citizen is quite different from EVE. In EVE you are a "ship" (and no, the avatar in his captains quarters does not count), in Star Citizen you will be ... you. Whatever you want to be.
EVE is a massively multiplayer game, Star Citizen will be a multiplayer game (no massively). No 4000 player battles in SC ... with all the advantages and disadvantages this brings. I expect immersion factor to be higher in Star Citizen, without fofo suiciding Goons etc.
EVE is a tactical game (at least until we get EVE Valkyrie), while Star Citizen is a twitch skill based joystick flying space sim.
Have fun
My point is that backers pay as much or as little as they want. If they want to pay only a small amount of money, they were able to get Star Citizen for as low as 20 bucks. CIG had something for everyone. If you WANT more, you can pay more ... but its not CIG forcing you to buy it. All that extra stuff - its not needed for the game. But its nice to have a SC T-Shirt ;-) Just as its nice to have an xkcd or Firefly T-Shirt.
A few weeks or months into the game after launch - depending on the amount of personal playtime - anyone can have basically the same in game assets, no matter if (s)he paid 20 bucks or 15.000 bucks. Everyone can get anything for in game cash - no real life cash needed. And no item will be available for ONLY real life cash, thats a design principle of SC.
Crowdfunding benefits the player because he gets the game he wants. NOT the game the publishers want him to want. Its HIS choice. Its not a choice made for him by force-feeding him the product of the newest marketing campaign of EA or Ubisoft through ten different media channels. And to be able to choose, we - the backers - are willing to crowdfund the project of our choice with an amount of money we personally feel comfortable with. And i stress the words ... OUR CHOICE.
Have fun
The world is full of people with great ideas. Only VERY few of them are able to turn that into working reality. This is even more true in the world of games.
Any developer knows that to secure funding you need to have at least a working prototype as proof of concept before having the slightest chance to raise money. This is for a reason. Many great ideas simply fail on a practical level. Investing in such a project is simply foolish unless you are ready for a very high level of risk on your investment. Hell, even with a promising proof of concept many games fails to make it through development into something playable, but at least it gets rid of the worst offenders.
So, yeah, they kinda HAVE failed to deliver. When I backed "The Repopulation", it was based off thier videos of actual main gameplay experience with the prototype. When I backed by second game "At the Gates" it was after watching a gameply video of actual main gameplay. Touching this before they have a prototype showing off the stuff that is not trivial (trivial being space flight, standard fps stuff, stuff that has been done so many times as to not posing a risk on thier own) but the actual main seamless gameplay experince they are promising, I will allow myself due doubts.
Could the game turn out great? Sure. But there is really nothing hard to support that as of yet. It is not hate, but a call for cooler heads to prevail. Crowndfunding should not equal "easy money" for the devs. They should still be required to deliver proof of concept on the hard areas of gameplay and not get away with just flashing us shiny graphics.
I granted you that, yes, you can pay what you want. Yet you are not willing, in spite of the evidence, to agree that RSI indeed have managed to get thier hands on a lot of players willing to pay a lot more, aka. "whales".
I guess you are trying to use the "crowdfuding" argument to say that this is normal and acceptable, and not whaling. I counterargue that whailing is 100% about making the whale feeling good about spending all that money, to keep the income flowing. And in that RSI have succeded.
When Blizzard fails, they can afford to pull out and cancel the project.
When RSI knows they have failed, they have to continue making incredible trailers, selling ships, and acting as if nothing is wrong because that's the only thing they can do. Even if they know it's completely hopeless they can't do anything but to continue on with delivering the failure until the studio runs out of money.
RSI / CIG is supported via crowdfunding by people that have spent more than the average price of a game. However, that is in 99,99 % of the cases NOT the same as a "whale" in online and mobile gaming. People have willingly given that money to help change the gaming industry. Its not only about this single game "Star Citizen".
Check out e.g. this article that digs deeper into what a "whale" is.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/14/whales-and-why-social-gamers-are-just-gamers/
And then try to guess again how many of those 690.000 gamers have spend MORE than 100 $ A MONTH for the last 2 years. Or up to 100.000 $ like in some Chinese games.
You will also see - by reading a bit the available literature - that the average "whale" in the West is NOT the super PvP guy aiming for the almighty gear combo (that you will most likely see in Asia). Its more often than not a guild leader trying to enhance his guild's standing by outfitting his comrades to a degree higher than the average. If you read the CIG forums, you will also know that most people with many ships plan to lend them out to their organisation buddies - and this was usually the main reason to have more than one ship in the first place. Furthermore ... those that bought big expensive ships like the Javelin usually did it for their guild/organisation ... NOT to have a solo pwnmobile. You even find examples for such guilds here on the recruitment posts of Star Citizen subforum of mmorpg.com.
We seem to interpret the "evidence" somewhat differently ;-)
Have fun