Vapourware Scam Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

[Chunkyman]

I caved and bought a Drake Herald today, despite my hesitation with spending more money on Star Citizen (only had an Aurora LX before).

I kind of like the Herald as it stands, but I'm more interested in either selling it for profit later or even more likely using it to CCU to something a bit bigger (like a Cutlass). Failing a CCU option though I'll be perfectly happy to just keep the ship. The upgraded hanger is a welcome addition as well.

If they model the interior well and make it like a NEET camper van (which the current concept art already reminds me of) then I'll almost definitely keep it. I'm very nitpicky over good/realistic feeling interiors.

 

[bonescraper]

An upgraded hanger, eh? Interesting. It lets you hang more clothes or what?

 

[Chunkyman]

An upgraded hanger, eh? Interesting. It lets you hang more clothes or what?

Towels, mostly.

 

[Norfleet]

The truly hoopy frood always knows where his towel is.

 

[Disgruntled]

So uh, anyone going to pick up that $2500 destroyer?

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14314-Star-Citizen-Anniversary-Sale

I try to keep positive but this sort of thing spikes the insanity of it all.

 

[Blaine]

So uh, anyone going to pick up that $2500 destroyer?

Nope. I'm cashing out the rest of my pledge ships, because I'm through with this game.

 

[Disgruntled]

Nope. I'm cashing out the rest of my pledge ships, because I'm through with this game.

Was this the final straw or something else?

At least you made a massive profit from the venture. Im going to stick with it a while longer, too emotionally invested to give up with so much to be revealed yet.

 

[Blaine]

It was the final straw.

It's not just the incredibly high price of the Javelin—it's that this is the latest in a long list of CIG reneges. They've "changed their minds" far too many times. In this particular case, it was stated way back when that the Idris Corvette (now upgraded to a Frigate) would be the largest ship pledgers could buy with real money. CIG also stated that the Idris would never again be sold after the original pledge campaign ended, but they went ahead and did it anyway... twice. They've reneged so many times that I can't remember each instance. Perhaps I posted a list earlier in the thread.

My trust level in CIG is close to zero. What's next? Will they decide that user-hosted, moddable private multiplayer servers are too much work to implement? Will they ignore the very serious issue of controller agnosticity now that the furor over gimbaling mouse-aim has died down? Will grinding for credits be Korean-tier obnoxious, despite assurances to the contrary?

Frankly, the out-of-control sales have finally become an issue for me, too. I'm forced to agree with Mortmal et al.: Each sale is more lavish and expensive than the last, and CIG constantly unveil and sell brand-new ships rather than properly implementing existing ones. They spend more time publishing fan fiction and stupid videos no one in their right mind would want to watch than they do unveiling and elaborating upon substantial aspects of the non-ship portions of the game.

 

[Bradylama]

At this rate they're going to offer to sell a single Bengal Carrier to the highest bidder.

But that’s not all! We’re making the Javelin available for hardcore players who are dedicated to supporting Star Citizen… and we’re using the opportunity to allow new players to join the game as well. We’re using the assortment of Javelin destroyers to subsidize discount packages for new players: 200 Javelins means we can make 5,000 $20 Aurora game packages available for sale at the same time!

How can anybody believe this horseshit?

 

[Blaine]

For those who can't math, that means that CIG will allot $100,000 of the $400,000 they'll get from the sale of those Javelins (and they will all sell) to "subsidize" cheaper basic Aurora pledges.

I'm left to wonder why CIG can't use all $400,000 to subsidize new Aurora packages. No spokesman has ever made a peep about needing more money. There is absolutely no financial transparency whatsoever, not anymore. It's just mindlessly assumed at this point that more money pledged = bigger and better game, but there truly is a limit. Infinitron's rumored theory that CIG is operating on a financial razor's edge is looking better and better with each passing day.

 

[Bradylama]

There are plenty of signs that would support that. Their overextended development process requires multiple teams in different locations to work on every feature at once, which means that they're eating up a tremendous spike of labor costs. I wonder how much all of their promotional events used to showcase buggy half-finished gameplay is costing them, when a simple development video could have done the same thing without packing an auditorium full of people.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Money milking at its finest. I'll still give the game a try when it's out but I'm still pretty darned convinced that it'll be difficult for a chump like me to do anything without any of those fancy ship packages the trust fund kiddies can afford.

Kind of halfway tempted to buy the game at this point since the anniversary edition of the aurora package isn't overly expensive and I've always been a fan of multi-role ships... buuuut I wouldn't see any pay-off on that investment for at least 3 years. Choices and consequences.

 

[Perkel]

Don't buy it.

People are idiots. All of those ships will be available in game to earn it. I don't understand in first place why people even want buy a ship which will later destroy your fun of acquiring it other than giving money to help development of SC.

 

[Perkel]

There are plenty of signs that would support that. Their overextended development process requires multiple teams in different locations to work on every feature at once, which means that they're eating up a tremendous spike of labor costs. I wonder how much all of their promotional events used to showcase buggy half-finished gameplay is costing them, when a simple development video could have done the same thing without packing an auditorium full of people.

They have more people working on SC now that Bungie has working on Destiny. They have like 230-240 people where Bungie is ~200.

 

[Blaine]

I don't understand in first place why people even want buy a ship which will later destroy your fun of acquiring it other than giving money to help development of SC.

"Progressing" from one ship to the next isn't a primary draw for some people. The game isn't slated to be a post-2004 themepark MMO.

Besides, for 99%+ of players, there will always be more ships and modules to buy, no matter how many ships and credits they have. Already have one of each ship and every module/weapon combination you could possibly want? Start buying ships to populate a hangar elsewhere in the universe for your convenience. Buy multiple duplicates so that you don't have to wait for insurance to replace a lost ship every time. Hell, populate multiple hangars with duplicates of many different ship hulls. Buy some ships for your friends to use. Use your vast fortune to hire mercenaries to escort you wherever you go.

I've never really understood why "progression" is so important. For me, the draw will be honing my player skill at flying and combat (primarily PvP) across numerous different ship hulls and classes... provided the controls aren't stupidly mouse-centric, which they currently are, though that may change if ways to accurately direct gimbaled turrets other than a mouse are found/allowed.

 

[Haba]

$62,174,690.

~4 mil in the past 7 months.

Bleed pig, bleed.

 

[Perkel]

Progression is one of the main reasons people play space sims in first place. To start with shitty ship and work your way up to something grand.
All previous games worked on that system.

Also there shit ton of people who hate PvP and want nothing to do with it (i'd say majority). Last thing i want imo is to have some fuckers ruining my game or griefing in my game.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Don't buy it.

People are idiots. All of those ships will be available in game to earn it. I don't understand in first place why people even want buy a ship which will later destroy your fun of acquiring it other than giving money to help development of SC.

True, but I figured since the release price would be at least 45 dorrah anyway... Ah, you're right. Fuck pre-pre-pre-ordering shit, I'll buy the bloody game when it's out in six years.

Last thing i want imo is to have some fuckers ruining my game or griefing in my game.

I'm not so much against this, I am however against some asshole starting out in a CLEARLY superior ship to everybody else because he had 200 dorrah to burn... and a nice lifetime insurance to go along said ship so that he can never, ever, lose it. Now that ruins the game for me.

 

[Blaine]

Progression is one of the main reasons people play space sims in first place. To start with shitty ship and work your way up to something grand.
All previous games worked on that system.

All previous games except persistent online space sims such as the now-defunct Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative, Vendetta Online, the online portion of Evochron, etc. Actually, even in single-player space sims, for my money the excitement lay in getting good at the game, not in acquiring bigger and better ships. If all you care about is upgrading to the biggest ship with fanciest weapons, that's your prerogative.

Also there shit ton of people who hate PvP and want nothing to do with it (i'd say majority).

Yes, and these people are colloquially known as "carebears." The majority of people also think World of Warcraft is the best MMO ever made, enjoy playing AAA console games, etc.

griefing

Well, that explains it.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

I think most of my time in Star Citizen is going to be spent in a Freelancer just flying around and exploring stuff, that alongside a bit of pvp whenever I meet somebody on my travels. It's what I did whilst playing Freelancer back in the day and Star Citizen will probably lend itself towards that sort of style just as well as Freelancer did.

I can't say that I understand the mentality behind wanting to avoid pvp at all cost though. To me it just enhances the experience; rather than meeting brainless bots over and over again which offer no real challenge or danger, you have unpredictable players who might be a hell of a lot better than you are, and their intent is never truly known. It's exciting, more so than... well, anything else. But then again, to each his own.

 

[Blaine]

My experience playing EVE Online proved, to me at least, that the very real existence of other players elsewhere in the universe, plotting unknown devious shenanigans and lurking around every corner, adds a great deal to the excitement of the game. It's such a simple thing, allowing people to attack each other, yet goes a very long way toward making the world feel alive. Safe is pretty boring.

 

[Perkel]

Well, that explains it.

Yeah i had my share of various online empire builders games where you could get allied with someone. Always you had to join some alliance to do anything worthwhile and if you don't most of the time you were "dead" in few days.

SC won't be different. And the less economy you will have the more people will simply hunt non allied dudes for fun meaning soon any missions and so on will be worthless making it big PvP game.

Also this means you don't control anything really as there will be just handful of people controlling what to do instead of you. This also means there will be bunch of losers talking about how game is amazing because someone else had fun doing stuff when you are digging you asteroid for last 30 days.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

My experience playing EVE Online proved, to me at least, that the very real existence of other players elsewhere in the universe, plotting unknown devious shenanigans and lurking around every corner, adds a great deal to the excitement of the game. It's such a simple thing, allowing people to attack each other, yet goes a very long way toward making the world feel alive. Safe is pretty boring.

As Perkel pointed out above, there's a bit of a problem when people band together into massive NAP-fests and then prey on the people who won't join their little empire. I played Eve during Red Moon rising, and for about six years onward from that, so I saw the transformation from a game where even small corps can have fun to the kind of game where people gank corvettes and frigates using capital ships of varying degrees. There might be a risk of that kind of stuff happening in Star Citizen, but to what extent we can't really know until the game has been released and played for a couple of weeks.

Still, I'm not too worried. There will be circle jerkers everywhere, god knows I encountered them all of the time while I was playing Freelancer. There are ways of avoiding them and carving out your own slice of fun though, like all of the times I spent in a small ship in Eve online, just harassing the null-sec alliance-tards, forcing them to search high and low for me for the better part of a couple of hours... and the ingame smacktalk during those hours were always grand.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah and the less things to do in the game the more people will hunt other players for fun.

IMO best case scenario would be to introduce AI faction controlled by designers that would direct corporation eyes to it instead of players. For example the bigger the corporation the bigger threats it needs to fight.

Truly best case scenario would be to introduce faction that would essentially level out sooner or later any corporation more or less completely and the big fun from it would be to who will create bigger corporation before downfall.

Also permadeath would also work well as you would loose all your assets, ships, crew and so on.

 

[Whiran]

For those who can't math, that means that CIG will allot $100,000 of the $400,000 they'll get from the sale of those Javelins (and they will all sell) to "subsidize" cheaper basic Aurora pledges.

I'm left to wonder why CIG can't use all $400,000 to subsidize new Aurora packages. No spokesman has ever made a peep about needing more money. There is absolutely no financial transparency whatsoever, not anymore. It's just mindlessly assumed at this point that more money pledged = bigger and better game, but there truly is a limit. Infinitron's rumored theory that CIG is operating on a financial razor's edge is looking better and better with each passing day.

If we assume it costs a company $100,000 USD for salary and benefits / insurance per average developer (which, interestingly enough, it basically does although this is simplifying the matter some) then one can map out roughly, in terms of salaries, how much money the development is burning through.

If there are 250 people working on the game then that's burning 25 million a year.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if they are paying some of their people extra 'cause they can. Plus this does not take into consideration any additional expenses they might have taken on (buying a building, buying new technology toys, all the travel first class of course, fun perks of working at a cool and edgey dev studio, etc) so chances are they are burning closer to 30 million a year at this time. Or, put another way, they are burning around 2.5 million a month.

If they are paying above average to their developers then that 30 million a year number rises quickly. Even 10% more than average is 3 million / year more.

They've raised some 62 million (closing in on 63 million) and it's been two years since development started. Naturally, at the start they didn't have 250ish people working on the project so their burn rate wasn't as high then. I believe they've been at around the 250 mark for about a year now so that's 30 million of the 62 gone. For the first year they probably went through half that? Maybe a quarter? I dunno, I didn't pay attention to how rapidly the project ramped up in terms of team members. I think 12 million used in the first year is reasonable - it's a pretty arbitrary estimate but the number is nice since 12 + 30 = 42 and I like round numbers plus 42 is a great number unto itself.

That's 42 million out of the 62 - leaving 20 million. 20 million isn't enough to last out another year of development.

Of course all of this is speculation and simplification. But, chances are, at the rate they are currently going they would run out of money by next year November.