Star Citizen by Chris Roberts (Freelancer, Wing Commander, Privateer, etc)

hey guys, lets waste money on fictional video game star ships

as btcc22 would say:

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Originally Posted by Btcc22

Tomato, tomato. You wouldn't be 'donating' if you weren't receiving the ships in exchange.

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Yes I would, I really want this game to happen and I've determined that I'll be donating $1000~ to its development. Give or take a couple hundred depending on if new ships come out and I melt my packages for different ones, etc.

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Originally Posted by Higuy

hey guys, lets waste money on fictional video game star ships

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Waste is a totally incorrect term? None of it is being wasted (hopefully), it's all being used towards game development. The $34,000,000 that they have now is in AAA budget territory, so as long as we get a AAA quality game everyone will be happy.

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Originally Posted by Cortexian

Still wrong sorry!

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tl;dw

you're so salty ROFL

I think some of you are underestimating how much Cortexian wants this game to happen. He's a huge Freelancer nutjob and would pledge large amounts to it even if he were not to receive ships in return. The difference between him and most other people that purchased the game is that we want value from our money. The main purpose I pledged money was because I was guaranteed a ship, Alpha, Beta, and Full game access for a one-time fee. Since there is guarantee to get these item in return for money we pledge, this is a proper transaction and counts as an actual cost. Words from Chris Roberts cannot change that. Now if RSI were to remove the guarantee that we'd get these things, then it would truly be a pledge because we would be doing it to show confidence in the game without fully expecting to receive everything listed.

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Originally Posted by Amit

I think some of you are underestimating how much Cortexian wants this game to happen. He's a huge Freelancer nutjob and would pledge large amounts to it even if he were not to receive ships in return. The difference between him and most other people that purchased the game is that we want value from our money. The main purpose I pledged money was because I was guaranteed a ship, Alpha, Beta, and Full game access for a one-time fee. Since there is guarantee to get these item in return for money we pledge, this is a proper transaction and counts as an actual cost. Words from Chris Roberts cannot change that. Now if RSI were to remove the guarantee that we'd get these things, then it would truly be a pledge because we would be doing it to show confidence in the game without fully expecting to receive everything listed.

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u mean he's so eager to get dunked on by me that he's willing to give money to a guy on the internet

aww that's so cute <3<3

Time to ruin the troll: He has a free self-updating press account in his name. If he loses a ship it's no big deal, since he can just come back with another one at no cost. You automatically have an inferior account, Sel. That said, Idrises are for plebs.

On the other matter, if one knew there was a reward for supporting the game before giving money, he bought the item. If one just donates without knowing of a reward and are given a ship post-fact, he made a donation and was rewarded for it.

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Originally Posted by Cortexian

Waste is a totally incorrect term? None of it is being wasted (hopefully), it's all being used towards game development. The $34,000,000 that they have now is in AAA budget territory, so as long as we get a AAA quality game everyone will be happy.

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yeah man because you need 34 million dollars to make a good game. it better be good if they have that kind of budget.

It's one thing to donate towards something you think is cool and care about, but on the other hand you are also essentially paying to win. Sure, developers need money to cover costs such as software licensing, but if the people you are donating too are as dedicated as you think, they probably could make a pretty nice game in CryEngine 3 without a ton of money to do so. Also note the fact of how much money they have raised and their popularity, they will be rolling in even more dough by the time it releases. Look at all the indie games that have started from nothing and have become huge successes. A game also isn't competitive when you have people paying to get new items, weapons, ships (etc). Sure, you helped finance the game, but does that mean you should be getting stuff like this to be automatically better than other people upon the games release? A game normally should be using peoples skill, not their money, when it comes to things like this, and should be fair.

Like Warsaw said, knowing what happens when you donate also makes a huge difference.

I wouldn't say it's pay to win. As far as I am aware, you can earn these ships from within the game, and I doubt PvP is the only way to do so.

Paying to have immediate access to things is not pay to win when the same ships can be had in-game for the free currency.

Keep in mind, there's gonna be player hosted dedicated servers as well that effectively replicate the persistant universe on a smaller scale (probably only limited to hardware resources). So if CIG makes the PU economy stupid then they're fucked because everyone will just migrate to the dedicated servers.

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Originally Posted by Cortexian

Paying to have immediate access to things is not pay to win when the same ships can be had in-game for the free currency.

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That's the Chris Roberts definition but it's not one I share. Paying money to bypass the game's mechanics in my mind is pay-to-win, period.

Having such a model in place gives developers an incentive to make it difficult to obtain the items through normal play, in the hopes of players giving up and shelling out instead. If you want a good example of this, see Diablo 3's auction house or pretty much any F2P game. By your definition it could be nigh on impossible to obtain items through play but as long as there's a possibility, nope, not pay-to-win!

$34m in funding, non-F2P and it still has micro-transactions. If a player so badly wants to skip the game, why not do it on a non-official server?

It irks me somewhat that people pull out the "but I don't have time to play" argument in response to having this kind of stuff in games. What they really mean is that they don't have the patience to progress through the game and would prefer to have an insta-win button handed to them at the expense of those that can't afford it. Sure, without paying their way through the game they may never compete with the players that spend their entire waking life playing but that's okay and how it should be - not having your cake and eating it too.

You can boil the whole argument down to, "it's not fair that somebody has something I don't", but if you continue down that path you'll arrive at "but I don't have time or money". Catering to those folk wouldn't make a good business case, though.

"Why do you care?", I hear you ask. I care for the reason I've already mentioned; it encourages developers to stack the game against those that aren't willing to pay and to reserve the best content for those shelling out. For an example of the former, see Tribes Ascend. For the latter, see WoW's mount and pet shop.