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Please explain how this game is not pay to win
Viper482
Member LegendaryPosts: 4,101
This is a serious question, because I keep seeing people insist it is not just because you will not be able to buy the ships with RL money after it releases. The problem is you CAN buy them now with RL money. How is it people spending $1000's of dollars on ships today are not paying to win from day 1 while the rest of us are flying around in our poor man newbie ships? If you are more powerful from day 1 you will be more powerful day 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. So I can eventually afford to buy your $1000 ship in game after a couple months of playing, by then where is the guy who started with that ship?
Seriously, explain to me how this is not pay to win without the "no one is forcing you to buy anything" cliche, and without telling me everything will be available in game for game currency. I get both of those concepts, but it walks and talks like a duck, to me it is a duck. Convince me otherwise please, because so far I don't get it.
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The way I look at it is that it is p2w BUT in the best possible way that anything you buy for real life cash can be earned in in game without the RNG game that some of the really bad f2p games use like PWE etc
I could very well be wrong but it looks like the p2w in this game may be very time limited to the first 3 or 6 months etc.
You also need to keep in mind that some of the more expensive multi crew ship although npc able may not be very effective solo and be easy prey to smaller groups in solo/duo ships.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
@Viper
First - no one forces you to buy bigger ships for more (real world) money. You can get them all in game once the game has launched. You knew that already, but that is the core of the answer. The other core answer is that any advantages at game launch with evaporate quickly after a few weeks. Yes, a guy may have 20 ships a game start ... but he can fly only one. And yes, it may be a good ship, but this is a joystick-twitch-space-sim ... if he sucks as a pilot, not even the best ship and the best equipment will save him. Yes,he may have Lifetime Insurrance .. but as insurance will be a minor cost, this is only a minor advantage. This is not EVE Online - you cannot have a new ship every 10 minutes because the "Death of a Space Man" permadeath mechanic is a showstopper here.
This topic has been discussed ad nauseum for the last two years, so have fun hearing ALL the pros and cons, all arguments you could think of in 334 pages of posts:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/93157/katamari-damashii-pay-to-win
Yes - i could go into more detail and pick some of the reasons from this mega-thread and explain it to you. But from experience its wasted time- done that often enough . Read the arguments and decide for yourself.
Have fun
I think the best way to think of Star Citizen is to call it pay to (quickly) win.
It's been said that people will be able to obtain all those glorious shiny ships using nothing but in-game mechanics, but if you don't want to wait, then open up your wallet.
However, seeing as most games operate in this manner, then I guess it is p2w. All depends on your definition, of course.
Disclaimer: My opinion should be considered moot as I'm not convinced that the game will release.
I started reading that thread and over and over and over, the line that was repeated was "You can get that in game" But you, and that thread (to the point where I tired from reading the same reply) have not answered the OP's question.
Player 1 starts out with a better ship. Player 2 has to earn it. If it takes player 2, 3 months to earn an equivalent ship as what player 1 had from day 1, what has the ship that player 1 had allowed him to establish during his advantage from that 1st 3 months? It's the exact same argument used in other P2W games.......They are still P2W.
The argument "You can earn it in game" implies that players who bought better ships sit around idly doing nothing. But that won't be the case. They will be grinding themselves, but they will have better abilities to start off with. If this game has vertical progression, these players with better ships will be able to maintain, if not widen their leads and always stay ahead.
So, unless this game has some kind of progression plateau or horizontal progression system, I still see the same situation the OP sees.
There is a reason some people are willing to spend big money in games. Publishers and developers know this. They have gotten very clever when it comes to disguising how they cater to that need.
MAGA
Fans will argue it's not pay to win because it doesn't fit the literal definition, ignoring the fact that it gives you an immense leg up in assets and the capacity to earn many times more than a non-paying customer from day one.
It is pay to win, it stopped being about donations or crowd-funding long ago and is now simply a cash shop for a game in development.
I dread to think how they're going to balance things...
The game is not pay to win, because as of yet there is no game. No game means that you can't win yet. Victory being impossible means that it's not a pay to win game.
It might be pay to win game once it's released but that's another matter.
If its anything like a sand box those guilds/corps that move their from other games will establish themselves before the average player and remain on top of the food chain.
Those guilds/corps that spend real money will be way ahead.
The only way it doesn't is if you think these people who are spending money aren't also playing the alpha/beta and learning how the game works and basically getting better before the main population hits.
While being able to buy a small advantage is not so much of an issue, but factor in savvy players/guilds and that small advantage becomes insurmountable in a pvp game unless the dev steps in or they get bored and leave.
There are allot of flaws atm and I doubt they will be addressed.
I challenge your numbers. From information given out by CIG and Chris Roberts, backers were able to roughly calculate a conversion rate of 4.6 $ pledge package price equivalent per hour of non-hardcore gameplay (that means: not 100 % cash-earning missions 100 % of the time).
That means you could buy a second starter ship after maybe 7 hours of play.
A good single seater ship after maybe 20-30 hours of gameplay.
A multicrew ship like the Constellation after maybe 60 hours of gameplay (that was Chris Roberts example).
And the currently biggest ship in game - the Javelin - crewed by the recommended number of people working together will need somewhere around 55 hours of gameplay per member of the crew to obtain the necessary in game funds.
So its nowhere near the 3 months you mentioned. Please explain how you came up with that number.
And even IF someone has an initial monetary advantage .... hey, he could buy MOAR SHIPS. Ships he already has and cannot fly, because he can only fly one ship at a time. And this is a Chris Roberts game ... so any capital ship crewed only by one guy with an NPC crew and without a combat patrol of player fighters will be smeared all over the sector by a single wing of player operated torpedo bombers. Or - even more humiliating - he will be boarded by a group of player marines. Which then procede to peel him out of his cockpit SLOWLY with a spoon. And it will be a BLUNT spoon !
Have fun
All these "flaws" have been repeatedly addressed and officially answered in the last 2 years. Time and time again.
Just a quick summary:
As SC is a multi-player but not a massivly multi-player game. Organized guilds from other games (e.g. Goons from EVE) cannot bring their usual numbers to bear. A typical instance will have at max. 100 ships and one side cannot pile up in one instance. There are build-in measures in place to stop that from happening. If these work .. well, we have to find out in playtesting.
CIG also has the 90:10 rule. 90 % of the economy and ships will be NPCs. Any attempt by player organizations to seriously unbalance the economy and/or control of a system is not impossible, but will meet an ever increasing counter-force by NPC forces - both market and military (be it navy or pirates). And contrary to enemy player corps you cannot exhaust NPC forces with weeks of alarm clock ops in different time-zones.
These were only two of many different "tricks-of-the-MMO-trade" that CIG is aware of and has already countered. Rest assured, many many backers have pointed out these possible "flaws" months/years ago.
Have fun
1. The numbers are arbitrary. They are there for example.
2. I still think you are missing the question. It's not how big or how long the advantage is. It's "What can be done with it to secure a bigger one?" It doesn't mean "MOAR SHIPS" if there are other resouces.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
What can be done ? Check out this:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/24718/star-citizen-economy-and-employment/p1
Everything you never wanted to know about the Star Citizen economy.
You basically "only" have to build up a COMPLETE set of nodes for building star ships. And let me tell you, thats a BIIIIG project. Not something you can do in the first few days of the game. And by the time your chain of nodes is complete, everyone else has enough toys to kill parts of your node chain ... so you not only have to build it up, you also have to maintain and defend it. And THAT means player manpower !
Have fun
Large multi-game guilds have manpower and wallets and will be in game during the alpha/beta to work out exactly how to maximize their power base come launch. Its unavoidable.
I have seen nothing that prevents this, but there are mechanics to enable this.
The ideas are nice, but implementation falls short.
That is what the future Alpha and Beta playtesting is for. If the implementation is lacking, it can and should be corrected before launch.
CIG uses a LOT of metrics (they posted some of the numbers recently) to detect anomalies in all game systems - a balancing tool.
Have fun
you tell me what is there to "win" anyway?
Win in Pvp? Nope. Not happening. And even if who cares, it´s Alpha, there are just testing beds, you want to "win" in a testing bed? Win what?
Besides there are videos of the cheapest starter ships with good pilots busting the asses of Hornets (more expensive fighter type hull) .
Your pay to win ideas come from click and win MMOs and is a logical fallcy., this is a space sim that takes skill (plus outfitting of said ships)
So, no, it is not pay2 win it´s pledge to support the game.
Well said. That just about sums it up in a single sentence !
Have fun
I call it a Paw to jumpstart. You start off running but not having to earn your own ship ect ect will bite you in the butt later. Those who had to work for it will learn what to do and not do compaired to those who dont.
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Hi jircris.
with 2 more years of upcoming Alpha and Beta testing, just about everyone (no matter if he has an Aurora starter ship or a Javelin destroyer) will have plenty of time to learn just about any part of SC if they want to. CIG often opens up certain ship types for testing for everyone during the playtesting period.
Have fun
you just don´t get it,
this game has
NO investors
NO shareholders looking out for profit
and NO publisher
do you understand that gamers pledge TO GET THE GAME MADE?
no, you don´t grasp that concept, right?
nope, impossible.
The only thing you DO understand is an EA logo, a 60$ box price with a tacked on cash shop, season passes and overpriced "DLC". /facepalm
You pay 30 $. Thats half the price of a typical AAA game.
You CAN pledge more, but you don't have to. And IF you pledge more, its NOT to have a bigger ship. You pledge because you want to be part of this project - watch a game made that seriously pushes the boundaries of what is possible in the gaming industry. A game to break the current stalemate of endless reruns of the same idea, be it Sims 15 oder Call of Duty 22. A PC game that does NOT castrate itself because it has to cater to the console audience and its mediocre machines too.
Have fun
It gives an initial advantage that is true.
But what do you "win" exactly? they can become richer and get things faster.... but so what? who really cares? the economy is largely A.I run anyway....
Im hoping that RSI sticks to that for the entire lifespan of the game. It's still entirely possible for RSI to sell out the community to a publisher at some point after the post release craze. They're passionate about games, sure, but money pays the bills and helps them make more games once they finish this one. It's all to easy to go down that route in "team" environments where social influences call all the shots.