Quasi
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The whole unmelt system is a joke anyway and I don’t feel sorry for anyone who feels they were screwed over by it. The game is currently a pre-alpha test bed, and the very idea that you should be limiting access to any game asset by making it pay-to-access in this state is ludicrous. Alpha is for feature adding and basic testing. As such, all assets should be available on-demand to facilitate that testing. Implement the usual ship acquisition mechanisms in mid to late beta once everything else is relatively stable. Not doing so pretty much proves this is just a cash-grab.
Reminds me on when Ultima Online kept having to change their notoriety system to deal with the issue. They designed the system poorly from the onset, and all of their attempts at fixing it met with equal failure. The only fix that ended up “working” in any way was when they split the world in two (PVP/no-PVP). The “fix” worked for griefing, but ended up devastating the real estate market and the player community as a whole leading to the game becoming irrelevant in North America.
The truth is MMO gaming was in its infancy at the time and no one knew just how bad griefing would get, so no one planned properly for it. These guys have 20 years of hindsight and still insist on making rookie mistakes.
This guy made the post of the year. (Which is why he is on probation)
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6394796/#Comment_6394796
The cult shambles on. They get called out for changing things on a whim and then justify it as “well it’s alpha, things change!” Really? Basic design changes 180 degrees just like that? One poster was even lamenting that people don’t consider their purchases “donations” and should quit worrying about what the ships end up being! Seriously? I’d love to see that put in the marketing material.
Do I get all the stuff you promised me when I gave you $200?
Nope! We change it on a whim and then tell you to quit bitching!
That first reply is pure gold-pressed latinum. It illustrates the problem that all this is really stemming from, promising the Moon, and then completely failing to deliver. Anytime there is criticism leveled at SC it nearly always involves some statement that originated from CIG themselves!
Star Marine delayed/cancelled and people are pissed? That’s because it was promised by CIG and not delivered. Deadlines missed? Promised, not delivered. Hell, even the whole “missing development year” of 2011 wouldn’t even be an issue if Chris hadn’t been the one to claim he had a year of development already done in order to assure Kickstart backers that work was well underway!
What’s really amazing is that the forum threads are turning against CIG so quickly now. Before you might get one or two critical voices in a 4-5 page thread, now it’s starting right out of the gate! The tide she is a turning.
I have numerous doubts the crowdfunding cash is going to keep rolling in. In order to do that you would need something to hype, and effective hype usually comes from the gaming press. While the gaming press are notoriously corrupt, even they are starting to distance themselves from the mess. The most positive SC articles out there these days seem to be solidly in the “neutral” camp, without all the optimistic fluff from previous articles. Perhaps that is because the CIG checks aren’t coming in anymore, or perhaps even they see the writing on the wall and are distancing themselves.
No objective observer who is still fence-sitting is going to dump money into this. What would convince them to? Some
buggy tech demototally awesome, feature-rich game play footage? Sometoxic mudslingingpleasant conversation in the forums? Updates and videos on a website that look like more money was put in to them than the actual game? Nothing short of a PewDiePie level of hype will get people to ignore the numerous other options out there that are LIVE and PLAYABLE at this point.The only thing that bothers me is that goon leak posted at the top (currently) stating that the warchest has far more than 7mil still in it. Were they able to save a large sum from all the recent layoffs/closures?
You know, I really with someone would make a FAQ or some other piece of marketing for people who are contemplating signing up for SC. It would have things like simple questions that any normal person would ask, and then the answer would be one directly quoted from various White knights. It would look something like this:
Star Citizen FAQ
When will SC be released?
Oh God! Not this question again! Don’t you know that AAA games take years to develop and things are difficult with game development so things change constantly!
What do I get for the $x I spend on y package?
Your contribution is a donation, not a pre-order, you aren’t entitled to anything!
Will the game feature x?
Of course it will! But if it doesn’t, then it’s because you misunderstood what was promised.
I’m willing to bet no one would give money to a project that answered those questions with those answers. Sadly, no one reads the forums first, they just believe the marketing fluff.
Hardly surprising. When I bought my starter package back in early 2013 (or late 2012, whenever they were still under 9 million) the big selling point was the PU and it’s dynamic economy. SQ 42 was just added as a new feature and many people were upset. The backers weren’t really keen on a single player module as they had all signed up because of the MMO aspects (EVE and WOW were beyond massive at the time). The big worry was that too much attention would be spent on it and not on the main game (PU). That, and people wanting an MMO style game just weren’t interested in a SP game anyway.
Roberts bent over backwards to assure people that SQ42 would be totally optional and you could just jump straight into the PU (the only promise he seems to have actually kept so far!) . SQ42 was just a little extra stretch goal, but the meat and potatoes was the PU, no worries guys! Welp, fast forward to today and the PU is on the back-burner and SQ42 is now the main focus. Can’t imagine why people want refunds…..
This is a pure scam at this point. It isn’t even a scam to get the money, it’s a scam to get Robert’s digital ego out there in the form of SQ42. He went on Kickstarter and promised a multiplayer game, and then later slipped in SQ42 as a “stretch goal” extra. Years later the truth is out. All the money and focus is on SQ42. He only ever cared about SQ42 and could care less about the PU; that’s why he doesn’t even play test builds of it.
