I also agree on Kickstarter. Though if there's one title that's abused the hell out of this system, it's SC.
Nope, Oculus Rift takes the cake when it comes to "abusing" Kickstarter...
They used backer funds too get their development to the point where they were bought for $2Billion (BILLION !) by FaceBook, and that was even before the "launch" of their product ! They made SC look like amateurs, lol
At least they delivered an innovative product and are "thanking" their original backers. I really enjoyed my DK2 before I sold it and consider it a very unique gaming experience.
..."Though I'm fast one hundred thousand miles I'm feeling very still And I think my spaceship knows which way to go Tell my wife I love her very much (she knows!)"
Here is an example of "well written", the usual Beer4TheBeerGod style ... took 20 seconds to find on Google .... just in case some people wonder why he is not the most loved person in SC .....
Wow, Erillion...
Deflect much?
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
In response, you go off and find a completely unrelated post which was, frankly, a rather humorous read.... well, unless you're a devout SC apologist, I guess. You barely even acknowledge the actual emails you were questioned about.
Then, you declare that the irrelevant content you cited somehow renders everything else from that person invalid. Some classic, textbook "Apologist Tactics 101" right there: If you can't provide a solid rebuttal to refute the subject, grasp for something to disqualify it with, so you don't have to.
A bit more practice, Erillion, and you could be a politician. You're every bit as slippery and disingenuous. You're just just not quite clever enough to pull it off convincingly.
I also agree on Kickstarter. Though if there's one title that's abused the hell out of this system, it's SC.
Abused in what way ?
SC moved from KS to its own on-site funding project very early on. Of the 100 + million dollars raised only ~2 million are KS related.
I was refering to the crowdfunding system, not Kickstarter specifically.
Regardless.... abused in what way?
Honestly, I swear some people comment just for the sake of saying something edgy and bad ass, but they lack any sort of REAL knowledge about the subject they're posting on.
First of all, you post as though KS is just a system that is abused by game developers who never really ship anything, but over 75% of games successfully funded through KS have shipped and less than 4% fail to ship at all. So, that comment is wildly inaccurate.
Secondly, you act as though SC has abused the crowdfunding system. So I'll first say that you can dislike someone's business model, but you can't say that they've abused the system. If you look at the development progress between one year ago and now (Alpha 2.1) it's undeniable that there has been serious progress.
So, all-in-all, you're wrong all the way around. Feel free to continue to post like you know things though, I find it mildly amusing..... like people who walk around using irregardless like it's a real word.
The biggest problem with the whole thing is that you have, on one hand, someone who appears to have a certain agenda, whether that is to promote a name, get something for free, or just troll SC because he's board. On the other hand, you have a company that is not likely to release any specific details regarding moderation.
So while it might, on the surface, appear that Beer is right or makes good points, it's hard for me to come to that very conclusion after spending the last 15 years of my life watching the internet turn into the troller/pranker paradise that it is.
I've read a bunch of the articles regarding the financial troubles and poor working conditions and I'm only left with the impression that it was heavily biased and based entirely on 3rd party information and rumor. While I cannot disprove anything that was said, I can at least pull from my own anecdotal evidence that when someone is terminated, their immediate reaction is overwhelming hostility towards their former employer.
Even the financial evidence was just rumors, there were no balance sheets, no financial statements, no real or factual information regarding either the cash reserves nor the past/current/future expenditures meaning it was all assumptions based on assumptions.
There have been many MMOs released that had these same type of articles written about them, sometimes it would be true but most of the time it wasn't. So what we are left with is a series of articles with their supposed evidence being nothing more than assumptions based upon assumptions and disgruntled workers which is used to support the growing trend of people who, for whatever reason, form an opinion about a topic that is incapable of looking at anything objectively. These same people, even if proven wrong, will dissect every sentence and phrase of a rebuttal for anything they can use, whether it be in or out of context, in an attempt to salvage their point.
I've been wrong a lot, and I mean a lot, on these boards and others but the biggest difference is, I'm okay with being wrong. I'm okay with finding out something new and reassessing my opinion. However, the precursor to that is usually a logical and factual rebuttal to my own thoughts, which is increasingly hard to find on these boards. (On a side note, I think it's humorous that people still tell me how bad Reddit is despite some of the best and more engaging conversations/discussions taking place there).
While I do often worry that Star Citizen will fail, I, and a million+ others, feel it's a risk worth taking despite the delays or changes. In many ways, this is the game that many of you, on these very boards, have been asking, begging, and pleading for since my membership started. You're looking for different types of progression, more of a sandbox to play in, more realistic use of physics, improved support for user control devices, VR support, TrackIR support, etc etc. While these are not fully realized features, they are planned.
I think people get a false sense of how development actually works. There were probably some mistakes made by Chris Roberts in trying to make solid dates to release features and not explaining how features and scope have been increasing as the funding increased. Yes, there is feature/scope creep but that's not something that was entirely unplanned. If you look at many of the posts, conversations, or even some of the stretch goals, this feature/scope creep was built into the process. Many times it was explicitly stated that if we hit {x} goal, we'll improve/add this feature.
You see many people on the SC forums who just don't get what an Alpha is. There are loads of people with that false impression of what a SC Alpha is compared to the more recent proliferation of Early Access Alphas that we see more and more of. This is not only a problem with CIG not being more communicative on what an Alpha is, what they should expect to see, and what an Alpha is for. There isn't a day that goes by where there isn't a few new threads asking why {x} feature isn't working or why {y} mechanic isn't in the game.
This is probably the most ambitious game development undertaking in existence which is equally matched with the success of the crowdsourcing. This, to some, has sparked very visceral reactions in both camps and everyone in these camps are trying to prove and even defend their positions' to the death. And these are the people that the community should be ignoring.
Do I think SC will fail? No, not at this point.
Did I in the past? Yes, previous to the Alpha 2.0 and PTU 2.1.0 release.
Could it still fail? Sure, it very well could. I could lose the money I put into the crowdfunding and while that would be disappointing, I'm enjoying being a backer.
I also agree on Kickstarter. Though if there's one title that's abused the hell out of this system, it's SC.
Abused in what way ?
SC moved from KS to its own on-site funding project very early on. Of the 100 + million dollars raised only ~2 million are KS related.
I was refering to the crowdfunding system, not Kickstarter specifically.
Regardless.... abused in what way?
Honestly, I swear some people comment just for the sake of saying something edgy and bad ass, but they lack any sort of REAL knowledge about the subject they're posting on.
First of all, you post as though KS is just a system that is abused by game developers who never really ship anything, but over 75% of games successfully funded through KS have shipped and less than 4% fail to ship at all. So, that comment is wildly inaccurate.
Secondly, you act as though SC has abused the crowdfunding system. So I'll first say that you can dislike someone's business model, but you can't say that they've abused the system. If you look at the development progress between one year ago and now (Alpha 2.1) it's undeniable that there has been serious progress.
So, all-in-all, you're wrong all the way around. Feel free to continue to post like you know things though, I find it mildly amusing..... like people who walk around using irregardless like it's a real word.
I think you're confused about your first point. I never said the things you claimed I did. I've kickstarted numerous projects.
As for your second point. What does the progress in development (which I think is slow anyway) have to do with the system they use to fund it? They preached the gospel of evil publishers and then they go and sell ships, sell you offers in the likes of "spend 10k dollars to get the chance to buy this humongus ship for 2.5k!!", then sell variants of the same ships, then sell modules of the ships etc etc... they're literally selling anything they can think of. You even have to pay for every single ship you want to TEST in order to help them find bugs for it.
It took them ages to kind of remedy the situation by introducing REC so that you can grind to RENT ships to test them for them.
I mean they saw the opening and addiction that some whales had in collecting ships and they've capitalized it to the maximum.
Even Sandi when confronted with a question admitted the problem and wanted to find a way to make existing backers not want to spend more money. Then a week later they did that anniversary sale.. so typical managerial bullshitting as usual.
Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.
I mean they saw the opening and addiction that some whales had in collecting ships and they've capitalized it to the maximum.
That is 100% exactly what they are doing,it is also called exploiting your fan base.
I did some simple math the other day for a different reason,but it really made me think about this game and how either dumb supporters are or they are simply just very naive.
If you take 200 employees at 80k each and that is a lot,we are talking 6 1/2 years of monmey to finance this project and that is if the money just stopped coming in but it continues to come in.Many of those employees will be contracts that might be done after a few thousand not 80k and the average employee is likely only making 50-60k a year. This Roberts guy already has more than enough to make this game,so until he actually has a FINISHED product he doesn't need any more money.
Even if supporters still can't see the logic,just look back to Chris's speech when he started selling this idea,he said he only needed 6 million to make a GREAT game and that people should believe in him.Then he went on to say he has some investors lined up and NOW he is saying all that added expenditures is out of his own pocket because he is rich.
You do not need to be a math wizard to do the math.If he had investors which is likely true,he likely did not even need that 6 million,he most certainly does not need 100 million.Now of course most of the problem is the ADDICTION on spending and why we have had laws surrounding such problems for a lot of years already.The government really should step in cases like these because the people are not smart enough to control their addiction.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You even have to pay for every single ship you want to TEST in order to help them find bugs for it.
Unless you just tested them for free during the free fly weeks ;-) Of which there were many. It helps to read about them here in this subforum ....
And - of course - later you were able to test as much as you want when you want with the REC coins. I have a few hundredthousand of them.
>>> Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.>>> Interesting - can you get into more detail why you think the economy in SC will be "fucked up" ?
There WILL be heavy demand for player created ships, of that i am sure. Which means there will be heavy demand for raw materials. With the economy being 90:10 (NPC:PC) there can be a healthy competition between players, but no staged monopolies are possible like you sometimes see in EVE Online (and many other games - auction house buyouts anyone ?!). For EVE verterans see https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Gallente_Ice_Interdiction
I also agree on Kickstarter. Though if there's one title that's abused the hell out of this system, it's SC.
Abused in what way ?
SC moved from KS to its own on-site funding project very early on. Of the 100 + million dollars raised only ~2 million are KS related.
I was refering to the crowdfunding system, not Kickstarter specifically.
Regardless.... abused in what way?
Honestly, I swear some people comment just for the sake of saying something edgy and bad ass, but they lack any sort of REAL knowledge about the subject they're posting on.
First of all, you post as though KS is just a system that is abused by game developers who never really ship anything, but over 75% of games successfully funded through KS have shipped and less than 4% fail to ship at all. So, that comment is wildly inaccurate.
Secondly, you act as though SC has abused the crowdfunding system. So I'll first say that you can dislike someone's business model, but you can't say that they've abused the system. If you look at the development progress between one year ago and now (Alpha 2.1) it's undeniable that there has been serious progress.
So, all-in-all, you're wrong all the way around. Feel free to continue to post like you know things though, I find it mildly amusing..... like people who walk around using irregardless like it's a real word.
I think you're confused about your first point. I never said the things you claimed I did. I've kickstarted numerous projects.
As for your second point. What does the progress in development (which I think is slow anyway) have to do with the system they use to fund it? They preached the gospel of evil publishers and then they go and sell ships, sell you offers in the likes of "spend 10k dollars to get the chance to buy this humongus ship for 2.5k!!", then sell variants of the same ships, then sell modules of the ships etc etc... they're literally selling anything they can think of. You even have to pay for every single ship you want to TEST in order to help them find bugs for it.
It took them ages to kind of remedy the situation by introducing REC so that you can grind to RENT ships to test them for them.
I mean they saw the opening and addiction that some whales had in collecting ships and they've capitalized it to the maximum.
Even Sandi when confronted with a question admitted the problem and wanted to find a way to make existing backers not want to spend more money. Then a week later they did that anniversary sale.. so typical managerial bullshitting as usual.
Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.
Your arguments are full of assumptions and fallacies.
First of all, it wasn't a surprise that they were going to be selling ships, I'm sorry if that's the way you took it. Right in their initial campaign they were selling ships. So if you were somehow caught off guard when they SHOCKER! started selling ships, I'm really sorry. That's not abusing the system though, that's capitalism. They're abusing the system the same way that Wal-Mart or Best Buy are, I suppose.
I'm wondering if the fact that some people have money and you don't is somehow fuelling your argument here. Why the hell do you care what people spend their money on. I've seen brand new cars, and even BMWs, parked outside of houses that are, literally, almost falling over. I might shake my head and question their purchase decision, but I don't go off saying that BMW is abusive because they are selling cars to people who are addicted to their brand, you know, because the people must obviously be addicted to BMW since their house looks like it's about to cave in, but their car looks like it just drove off the lot.
You act as though every person in the game has spent $10,000. This is a fallacy. It's literally impossible, since the average spend is $100. I've shown the numbers numerous times on here and they are well aligned with industry numbers suggesting that a fraction of 1% of the population is a whale. So please don't act like this is pandemic.
Also, why should CIG be held to some higher moral standard than EVERY OTHER GAME COMPANY? Evolve had something like $250 of DLC at launch. Destiny shipped a game that was, apparently, a fraction of what was actually finished. We've become accustomed to a 5-hour campaign in CoD and at least 3 DLCs. Every collector's edition is now over $100.EVERY ONE!! If you want the full game (game plus season's pass) you're paying well over $100. Also, let's disregard the fact that every other F2P game on the market relies on whales. Let's NOT concentrate on that, though. We're ok with that, let's concentrate on Star Citizen because it seems like that's what the hipsters are against today.
As far as testing goes, you can go on feeling like you're "testing" something. I really love when people believe they are somehow doing developers a favour by "testing" when, in reality, they could probably get the same results by sticking a monkey in front of your computer and having it punch away at keys. Shoot, the monkey might even submit a more detailed bug report. I do think it's cute when people think they're actually testing, though. It's like me walking around saying that I'm a garbage man because I walk my garbage to the curb once a week, or saying I'm a Doctor because I put a bandaid on a cut or game my kid some cold syrup. Similar to whales, the vast majority of good, quality bug submissions come from a very small percentage of the population. Everyone else is simply a node in a huge distributed network of computers.
Finally, with regards to economy. It's highly speculative to say that something will be fucked up before it's even shipped, but just like assholes, everyone's got an opinion. Sort of like all that talk that Archeage was going to usher in a new age of gaming........
You even have to pay for every single ship you want to TEST in order to help them find bugs for it.
Unless you just tested them for free during the free fly weeks ;-) Of which there were many. It helps to read about them here in this subforum ....
And - of course - later you were able to test as much as you want when you want with the REC coins. I have a few hundredthousand of them.
>>> Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.>>> Interesting - can you get into more detail why you think the economy in SC will be "fucked up" ?
There WILL be heavy demand for player created ships, of that i am sure. Which means there will be heavy demand for raw materials. With the economy being 90:10 (NPC:PC) there can be a healthy competition between players, but no staged monopolies are possible like you sometimes see in EVE Online (and many other games - auction house buyouts anyone ?!). For EVE verterans see https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Gallente_Ice_Interdiction
Have fun
Yeah I'm sure the free fly weeks are there out of their kindness of their heart and not as a means of getting you to try a ship, like it and then want to buy it once you don't have access to it. A practice companies that sell things have been doing since consumerism ever existed.
As for the the economy. There's numerous posts in various places, including the official forums that explain it a lot better than I could on how flooding the game with gazilions of ships of all progression stages is bad for the economy of the game.
The EvE economy is the absolute best I've ever experienced in a game. I'm surprised you'd use it as an example to avoid.
I'm also surprised you describe player-generated content that actually affects the playable world as something to avoid. These are the things that made EvE great and is something numerous games would have loved to have and failed to do so.
I mean they saw the opening and addiction that some whales had in collecting ships and they've capitalized it to the maximum.
That is 100% exactly what they are doing,it is also called exploiting your fan base.
I did some simple math the other day for a different reason,but it really made me think about this game and how either dumb supporters are or they are simply just very naive.
If you take 200 employees at 80k each and that is a lot,we are talking 6 1/2 years of monmey to finance this project and that is if the money just stopped coming in but it continues to come in.Many of those employees will be contracts that might be done after a few thousand not 80k and the average employee is likely only making 50-60k a year. This Roberts guy already has more than enough to make this game,so until he actually has a FINISHED product he doesn't need any more money.
Even if supporters still can't see the logic,just look back to Chris's speech when he started selling this idea,he said he only needed 6 million to make a GREAT game and that people should believe in him.Then he went on to say he has some investors lined up and NOW he is saying all that added expenditures is out of his own pocket because he is rich.
You do not need to be a math wizard to do the math.If he had investors which is likely true,he likely did not even need that 6 million,he most certainly does not need 100 million.Now of course most of the problem is the ADDICTION on spending and why we have had laws surrounding such problems for a lot of years already.The government really should step in cases like these because the people are not smart enough to control their addiction.
Yeah, and then we've got math wiz's who have no idea about how business actually works. Like let's go about factoring in base salaries as our bottom line expenditures. I've shown this a number of times on the forum already, but you should really go and learn about labour burden because you are clueless when it comes to understanding the costs to running a company. First of all, your average salaries are low for software people, never mind senior people, but even with your numbers, the labour burden will, at minimum put to cost of each person somewhere in the 90,000-120,000 mark. In the unlikely event that you're wrong and that a game developer actually makes more than $50k annually (like the average salary in the US was 80k in 2013) then that number simply increases. In reality, I'd say that they are not rolling in it at all and that if funding stopped today they wouldn't have enough to get through 2016.
So, no, you don't need to be a math wizard, but there's obviously math you haven't considered in your calculations, so you might need to be a finanace wizard.
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
Miss much ? ;-)
You find my opinion about these e-mails in this thread ( "My comment about the issue at hand: .... ")
Have fun
This is after you wrote/quoted a wall of text about something unrelated to what I asked. Then you stick about 4 lines worth of answer that again evade the real issue. You love to avoid and deflect as much as possible when it deals with something negative and you can't talk your way out of it.
I'm also surprised you describe player-generated content that actually affects the playable world as something to avoid. These are the things that made EvE great and is something numerous games would have loved to have and failed to do so.
Price fixing in the EVE Online economy made the game great ? In my opinion: No. EVE Online is a great game - but IMHO for completely different reasons.
Numerous games have problems with auction house buy-outs and price fixing. Especially the ones relying on servers with small populations. Gold farmers love those servers and games.
Price fixing is harder in EVE - being only one server for all - but possible. Guess why the market was flooded with stockpiled Gallente ice once it reached a certain treshold .... by the very same people that first killed all the ice miners and flooded the forums with propaganda to drive the price up ?!
Coming back to the topic of free fly weeks in Star Citizen. You believe CIG did it to make people buy expensive ships. Interesting - then why did the free fly weeks focus on smaller ships that will most likely be seen in the solo game Squadron 42 ? The pledge packages with those ships are not very expensive either. The Hornet series. The Origin series. The Aurora series. The Mustang series. The M50 racer.
Have fun
PS
>>>> As for the the economy. There's numerous posts in various places,
including the official forums that explain it a lot better than I could
on how flooding the game with gazilions of ships of all progression
stages is bad for the economy of the game. >>>>
Go ahead and link to those "numerous posts in various places".
Lets see some arguments instead of "it is fucked up"....
Anybody who doesn't understand why a company who has raised over 100mil (of which a big chunk came from their fan base) is held to a higher level of scrutiny than another company probably is the type who would have followed Jim Jones to Jonestown and drank the koolaid if he was a MMORPG developer. Cut it out.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
Miss much ? ;-)
You find my opinion about these e-mails in this thread ( "My comment about the issue at hand: .... ")
Have fun
This is after you wrote/quoted a wall of text about something unrelated to what I asked. Then you stick about 4 lines worth of answer that again evade the real issue. You love to avoid and deflect as much as possible when it deals with something negative and you can't talk your way out of it.
So ... to summarize ... you missed it ;-)
I did not avoid the question - i answered it with my personal opinion. Right here in this thread on page 2.
And also gave an example why i personally think that the game and the community will be better off without that guy. In ADDITION to answering the question.
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
Miss much ? ;-)
You find my opinion about these e-mails in this thread ( "My comment about the issue at hand: .... ")
Have fun
This is after you wrote/quoted a wall of text about something unrelated to what I asked. Then you stick about 4 lines worth of answer that again evade the real issue. You love to avoid and deflect as much as possible when it deals with something negative and you can't talk your way out of it.
So ... to summarize ... you missed it ;-)
I did not avoid the question - i answered it with my personal opinion. Right here in this thread on page 2.
And also gave an example why i personally think that the game and the community will be better off without that guy. In ADDITION to answering the question.
Have fun
I didn't ask you if the community would be better off without him. I asked you to comment on his well written emails to which you posted a wall of text that was completely unrelated to my question and was used to try to shore up your non-existant point
Anybody who doesn't understand why a company who has raised over 100mil (of which a big chunk came from their fan base) is held to a higher level of scrutiny than another company probably is the type who would have followed Jim Jones to Jonestown and drank the koolaid if he was a MMORPG developer. Cut it out.
That or they realize that money was given freely, under the acknowledgement it was a risk. Which any crowdfunding project is, regardless of how much they earn.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Anybody who doesn't understand why a company who has raised over 100mil (of which a big chunk came from their fan base) is held to a higher level of scrutiny than another company probably is the type who would have followed Jim Jones to Jonestown and drank the koolaid if he was a MMORPG developer. Cut it out.
So are you saying that we should give games that only raised $30k, $40k, 100K a break if they don't ship anything? Maybe we should just exclude them from statistics? They'll get a pass?
How about for reviews? Should we give consideration to games that had smaller budgets? Like, if the game is horrible we'll still give it a passing grade.
I think that all game developers are open to being scrutinized, but I think that there are times when we make assumptions about things based on things said by people who are obviously not educated on the subject. With SC, specifically, people talk about transparency and accountability quite often, but SC is far and away the most transparent and the most accountable I've experienced. Certainly, I'd have to say they would be in the top 10th percentile when it comes to transparency and accountability among privately-held gaming companies. That's completely unsupported, though, but it's based on my experience.
Second biggest complaint is missing delivery dates. I get that's disappointing, but that's a product of transparency, too. We know more about when things are supposed to happen, so when they don't we get all flustered. However, I already said last week, if we were to look at any top 10 upcoming games list for 2016, I'd bet that 80% of the games on that list will have experienced some sort of delay. I was talking completely out my ass, but I did go out and actually check that afterwards because I knew I'd be called on it (which I wasn't) but it's pretty damn close to being true. I think that out of the few sites I went to about 75% of the most anticipated games of 2016 had been delayed at some point.
As far as funding goes, again, the knowledge about funding is directly related to their transparency. They were running their own campaign, but are they legally obligated to tell us how much they've made in their funding campaign? Probably not (but not sure).
So I think that scrutiny is fine, but it's scrutinizing within the context of gaming in general opposed to the vacuum of SC that really needs to happen because when you actually look around, you'll find it's not all that different than "business as usual"
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
Miss much ? ;-)
You find my opinion about these e-mails in this thread ( "My comment about the issue at hand: .... ")
Have fun
This is after you wrote/quoted a wall of text about something unrelated to what I asked. Then you stick about 4 lines worth of answer that again evade the real issue. You love to avoid and deflect as much as possible when it deals with something negative and you can't talk your way out of it.
So ... to summarize ... you missed it ;-)
I did not avoid the question - i answered it with my personal opinion. Right here in this thread on page 2.
And also gave an example why i personally think that the game and the community will be better off without that guy. In ADDITION to answering the question.
Have fun
I didn't ask you if the community would be better off without him. I asked you to comment on his well written emails to which you posted a wall of text that was completely unrelated to my question and was used to try to shore up your non-existant point
If you're having trouble finding this, check the folder labelled "Goodbye to Bad Rubbish"
Comments
I really enjoyed my DK2 before I sold it and consider it a very unique gaming experience.
Though both companies are greedy as hell.
..Cake..
SC moved from KS to its own on-site funding project very early on. Of the 100 + million dollars raised only ~2 million are KS related.
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much (she knows!)"
David Bowie
Star Citizen - in a somewhat different way
..Cake..
Deflect much?
You were specifically asked about a specific chain of emails, which were specifically linked.
In response, you go off and find a completely unrelated post which was, frankly, a rather humorous read.... well, unless you're a devout SC apologist, I guess. You barely even acknowledge the actual emails you were questioned about.
Then, you declare that the irrelevant content you cited somehow renders everything else from that person invalid. Some classic, textbook "Apologist Tactics 101" right there: If you can't provide a solid rebuttal to refute the subject, grasp for something to disqualify it with, so you don't have to.
A bit more practice, Erillion, and you could be a politician. You're every bit as slippery and disingenuous. You're just just not quite clever enough to pull it off convincingly.
You find my opinion about these e-mails in this thread ( "My comment about the issue at hand: .... ")
Have fun
Regardless.... abused in what way?
Honestly, I swear some people comment just for the sake of saying something edgy and bad ass, but they lack any sort of REAL knowledge about the subject they're posting on.
First of all, you post as though KS is just a system that is abused by game developers who never really ship anything, but over 75% of games successfully funded through KS have shipped and less than 4% fail to ship at all. So, that comment is wildly inaccurate.
Secondly, you act as though SC has abused the crowdfunding system. So I'll first say that you can dislike someone's business model, but you can't say that they've abused the system. If you look at the development progress between one year ago and now (Alpha 2.1) it's undeniable that there has been serious progress.
So, all-in-all, you're wrong all the way around. Feel free to continue to post like you know things though, I find it mildly amusing..... like people who walk around using irregardless like it's a real word.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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So while it might, on the surface, appear that Beer is right or makes good points, it's hard for me to come to that very conclusion after spending the last 15 years of my life watching the internet turn into the troller/pranker paradise that it is.
I've read a bunch of the articles regarding the financial troubles and poor working conditions and I'm only left with the impression that it was heavily biased and based entirely on 3rd party information and rumor. While I cannot disprove anything that was said, I can at least pull from my own anecdotal evidence that when someone is terminated, their immediate reaction is overwhelming hostility towards their former employer.
Even the financial evidence was just rumors, there were no balance sheets, no financial statements, no real or factual information regarding either the cash reserves nor the past/current/future expenditures meaning it was all assumptions based on assumptions.
There have been many MMOs released that had these same type of articles written about them, sometimes it would be true but most of the time it wasn't. So what we are left with is a series of articles with their supposed evidence being nothing more than assumptions based upon assumptions and disgruntled workers which is used to support the growing trend of people who, for whatever reason, form an opinion about a topic that is incapable of looking at anything objectively. These same people, even if proven wrong, will dissect every sentence and phrase of a rebuttal for anything they can use, whether it be in or out of context, in an attempt to salvage their point.
I've been wrong a lot, and I mean a lot, on these boards and others but the biggest difference is, I'm okay with being wrong. I'm okay with finding out something new and reassessing my opinion. However, the precursor to that is usually a logical and factual rebuttal to my own thoughts, which is increasingly hard to find on these boards. (On a side note, I think it's humorous that people still tell me how bad Reddit is despite some of the best and more engaging conversations/discussions taking place there).
While I do often worry that Star Citizen will fail, I, and a million+ others, feel it's a risk worth taking despite the delays or changes. In many ways, this is the game that many of you, on these very boards, have been asking, begging, and pleading for since my membership started. You're looking for different types of progression, more of a sandbox to play in, more realistic use of physics, improved support for user control devices, VR support, TrackIR support, etc etc. While these are not fully realized features, they are planned.
I think people get a false sense of how development actually works. There were probably some mistakes made by Chris Roberts in trying to make solid dates to release features and not explaining how features and scope have been increasing as the funding increased. Yes, there is feature/scope creep but that's not something that was entirely unplanned. If you look at many of the posts, conversations, or even some of the stretch goals, this feature/scope creep was built into the process. Many times it was explicitly stated that if we hit {x} goal, we'll improve/add this feature.
You see many people on the SC forums who just don't get what an Alpha is. There are loads of people with that false impression of what a SC Alpha is compared to the more recent proliferation of Early Access Alphas that we see more and more of. This is not only a problem with CIG not being more communicative on what an Alpha is, what they should expect to see, and what an Alpha is for. There isn't a day that goes by where there isn't a few new threads asking why {x} feature isn't working or why {y} mechanic isn't in the game.
This is probably the most ambitious game development undertaking in existence which is equally matched with the success of the crowdsourcing. This, to some, has sparked very visceral reactions in both camps and everyone in these camps are trying to prove and even defend their positions' to the death. And these are the people that the community should be ignoring.
Do I think SC will fail? No, not at this point.
Did I in the past? Yes, previous to the Alpha 2.0 and PTU 2.1.0 release.
Could it still fail? Sure, it very well could. I could lose the money I put into the crowdfunding and while that would be disappointing, I'm enjoying being a backer.
As for your second point. What does the progress in development (which I think is slow anyway) have to do with the system they use to fund it?
They preached the gospel of evil publishers and then they go and sell ships, sell you offers in the likes of "spend 10k dollars to get the chance to buy this humongus ship for 2.5k!!", then sell variants of the same ships, then sell modules of the ships etc etc... they're literally selling anything they can think of.
You even have to pay for every single ship you want to TEST in order to help them find bugs for it.
It took them ages to kind of remedy the situation by introducing REC so that you can grind to RENT ships to test them for them.
I mean they saw the opening and addiction that some whales had in collecting ships and they've capitalized it to the maximum.
Even Sandi when confronted with a question admitted the problem and wanted to find a way to make existing backers not want to spend more money. Then a week later they did that anniversary sale.. so typical managerial bullshitting as usual.
Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.
..Cake..
That is 100% exactly what they are doing,it is also called exploiting your fan base.
I did some simple math the other day for a different reason,but it really made me think about this game and how either dumb supporters are or they are simply just very naive.
If you take 200 employees at 80k each and that is a lot,we are talking 6 1/2 years of monmey to finance this project and that is if the money just stopped coming in but it continues to come in.Many of those employees will be contracts that might be done after a few thousand not 80k and the average employee is likely only making 50-60k a year.
This Roberts guy already has more than enough to make this game,so until he actually has a FINISHED product he doesn't need any more money.
Even if supporters still can't see the logic,just look back to Chris's speech when he started selling this idea,he said he only needed 6 million to make a GREAT game and that people should believe in him.Then he went on to say he has some investors lined up and NOW he is saying all that added expenditures is out of his own pocket because he is rich.
You do not need to be a math wizard to do the math.If he had investors which is likely true,he likely did not even need that 6 million,he most certainly does not need 100 million.Now of course most of the problem is the ADDICTION on spending and why we have had laws surrounding such problems for a lot of years already.The government really should step in cases like these because the people are not smart enough to control their addiction.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
And - of course - later you were able to test as much as you want when you want with the REC coins. I have a few hundredthousand of them.
>>> Let's not even mention how fucked up the economy of the game will be once the game launches.>>>
Interesting - can you get into more detail why you think the economy in SC will be "fucked up" ?
There WILL be heavy demand for player created ships, of that i am sure. Which means there will be heavy demand for raw materials. With the economy being 90:10 (NPC:PC) there can be a healthy competition between players, but no staged monopolies are possible like you sometimes see in EVE Online (and many other games - auction house buyouts anyone ?!). For EVE verterans see https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Gallente_Ice_Interdiction
Have fun
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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As for the the economy. There's numerous posts in various places, including the official forums that explain it a lot better than I could on how flooding the game with gazilions of ships of all progression stages is bad for the economy of the game.
The EvE economy is the absolute best I've ever experienced in a game. I'm surprised you'd use it as an example to avoid.
I'm also surprised you describe player-generated content that actually affects the playable world as something to avoid. These are the things that made EvE great and is something numerous games would have loved to have and failed to do so.
..Cake..
Yeah, and then we've got math wiz's who have no idea about how business actually works. Like let's go about factoring in base salaries as our bottom line expenditures. I've shown this a number of times on the forum already, but you should really go and learn about labour burden because you are clueless when it comes to understanding the costs to running a company. First of all, your average salaries are low for software people, never mind senior people, but even with your numbers, the labour burden will, at minimum put to cost of each person somewhere in the 90,000-120,000 mark. In the unlikely event that you're wrong and that a game developer actually makes more than $50k annually (like the average salary in the US was 80k in 2013) then that number simply increases. In reality, I'd say that they are not rolling in it at all and that if funding stopped today they wouldn't have enough to get through 2016.
So, no, you don't need to be a math wizard, but there's obviously math you haven't considered in your calculations, so you might need to be a finanace wizard.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Numerous games have problems with auction house buy-outs and price fixing. Especially the ones relying on servers with small populations. Gold farmers love those servers and games.
Price fixing is harder in EVE - being only one server for all - but possible. Guess why the market was flooded with stockpiled Gallente ice once it reached a certain treshold .... by the very same people that first killed all the ice miners and flooded the forums with propaganda to drive the price up ?!
Coming back to the topic of free fly weeks in Star Citizen. You believe CIG did it to make people buy expensive ships. Interesting - then why did the free fly weeks focus on smaller ships that will most likely be seen in the solo game Squadron 42 ? The pledge packages with those ships are not very expensive either. The Hornet series. The Origin series. The Aurora series. The Mustang series. The M50 racer.
Have fun
PS
>>>>
As for the the economy. There's numerous posts in various places, including the official forums that explain it a lot better than I could on how flooding the game with gazilions of ships of all progression stages is bad for the economy of the game.
>>>>
Go ahead and link to those "numerous posts in various places".
Lets see some arguments instead of "it is fucked up"....
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I did not avoid the question - i answered it with my personal opinion. Right here in this thread on page 2.
And also gave an example why i personally think that the game and the community will be better off without that guy. In ADDITION to answering the question.
Have fun
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So are you saying that we should give games that only raised $30k, $40k, 100K a break if they don't ship anything? Maybe we should just exclude them from statistics? They'll get a pass?
How about for reviews? Should we give consideration to games that had smaller budgets? Like, if the game is horrible we'll still give it a passing grade.
I think that all game developers are open to being scrutinized, but I think that there are times when we make assumptions about things based on things said by people who are obviously not educated on the subject. With SC, specifically, people talk about transparency and accountability quite often, but SC is far and away the most transparent and the most accountable I've experienced. Certainly, I'd have to say they would be in the top 10th percentile when it comes to transparency and accountability among privately-held gaming companies. That's completely unsupported, though, but it's based on my experience.
Second biggest complaint is missing delivery dates. I get that's disappointing, but that's a product of transparency, too. We know more about when things are supposed to happen, so when they don't we get all flustered. However, I already said last week, if we were to look at any top 10 upcoming games list for 2016, I'd bet that 80% of the games on that list will have experienced some sort of delay. I was talking completely out my ass, but I did go out and actually check that afterwards because I knew I'd be called on it (which I wasn't) but it's pretty damn close to being true. I think that out of the few sites I went to about 75% of the most anticipated games of 2016 had been delayed at some point.
As far as funding goes, again, the knowledge about funding is directly related to their transparency. They were running their own campaign, but are they legally obligated to tell us how much they've made in their funding campaign? Probably not (but not sure).
So I think that scrutiny is fine, but it's scrutinizing within the context of gaming in general opposed to the vacuum of SC that really needs to happen because when you actually look around, you'll find it's not all that different than "business as usual"
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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If you're having trouble finding this, check the folder labelled "Goodbye to Bad Rubbish"
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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