• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: Hangar Module

Daedardus

Member
When this game is ready for release is it going to be free to play? Or standard pricing? Reason I ask is because I would imagine that thier goal for this game is to constantly expand the universe, new planets, ships, etc. Will they come in the form of expansion packs? Or is there some other monetization plan in play?

Game will be supported by a Guild Wars 2 like model. Buy once to play, but you can purchase some extra credits at a daily and montly cap if you want. They will keep on developing and tweaking the game with updates every two weeks after release.
 

grumble

Member
I can't believe no one ever made a decent space sim before. If these games or solar make their way to consoles then I'll be ecstatic.
 

CTLance

Member
@Ramocalypse: Buy to play, the GuildWars way - with some tweaks.

You sink (probably) 60 of your hard-earned dollarinos into this and get access to the full game, including the online component.

There is a cash shop to help you along if you don't have time to play but want to stay roughly on the same page as your friends/foes/neighbours/stalkers/pets, allowing you to buy in-game currency with limits on how much you can buy per timeslice and how much you can own in total. Also the usual cosmetic stuff and whatnot.

There will not be any sort of premium currency that can only be obtained through the cash shop, there is only this single in-game currency. All in-game items can be bought with the in-game currency, including above-mentioned cosmetic items, so all players can access all content without paying a dime more than the initial purchase price.

Besides, there will be moddable private servers that allow for anything at all. No items, Bengal only, Final Destination? All up in that bitch.
 

Daedardus

Member
I can't believe no one ever made a decent space sim before. If these games or solar make their way to consoles then I'll be ecstatic.

They could come, however, you'd be missing out on so many extras PC gaming is known for. Easy modability, free online and easier controller set up like instant switching between keyboard/mouse and gamepad, maybe even specialised joysticks. You'll also want to try cranking the graphics up to max, space needs to be viewed in all its glory.
 
Plus, that system will probably be stuffed to the gills with players. If you wish to explore jumpgates etc I bet there will be harsh competition. Same with manufacturing.

This is why I kind of feel that they haven't thought this thing through properly. The whole point of having players choose different starting locations in the game was load balancing, both on their server hardware and in the game universe (i.e. having multiple populated systems from the get go). And now we have a situation where a lot of backers (potentially 200,000+) will probably gravitate to this one system as their starting point so we're back to square one.
 

Nokterian

Member
"Space sims just aren't appealing to modern audience"

Meanwhile, the first space sim displaying a shadow of ambition in years gets enough money to fund a triple A game through crowdfunding, before even being close to a release, let alone available on stores.

This game is essentially a proof of how disconnected from its user base this industry is becoming.

It has shown by a lot of things like with kickstarter. Though i have not played a lot of space games this one has just everything i wanted. I love space in general but also exploration of other planets etc. Next month i am going to buy the deluxe hangar and 1 or 2 space ships i have the 315p explorer such a sexy ship.
 

Daedardus

Member
This is why I kind of feel that they haven't thought this thing through properly. The whole point of having players choose different starting locations in the game was load balancing, both on their server hardware and in the game universe (i.e. having multiple populated systems from the get go). And now we have a situation where a lot of backers (potentially 200,000+) will probably gravitate to this one system as their starting point so we're back to square one.

But this is the solution! You just will have to avoid that one system and reap the benefits from having something calm to start off with. :)
 

Zabojnik

Member
Man, Elite:Dangerous just released some Space station concepts and artwork in their most recent newsletter. YUM.

I cannot wait to see how Star Citizen Space stations will look like. Especially the player owned ones. Terra is nice and all, but I wants me mah spess stashunns!!!!!

I'm glad X Rebirth is coming out this year. Those space stations / cities look amazing and will likely set the minimum standard of what we can expect in Star Citizen.
 

CTLance

Member
I'm glad X Rebirth is coming out this year. Those space stations / cities look amazing and will likely set the minimum standard of what we can expect in Star Citizen.
Yesyesyes, X:Rebirth, how could I forget that. So many choices. And I'm gonna play them all. ALL OF THEM. Hrnnnngh-*
 

Zabojnik

Member
Yesyesyes, X:Rebirth, how could I forget that. So many choices. And I'm gonna play them all. ALL OF THEM. Hrnnnngh-*

You'll be burned out by the time Star Citizen is released. I'll gladly take that 300i or whatever have you off your hands. For a discounted price, of course. :p
 

Moff

Member
is it a good idea to sill pledge right now?
whats the most reasonable pledge?
as far as I see the most important thing are the ships?
will we still be able to buy them after the game officially launched? is this some kind of pay to win thing?

is it more reasonable to pledge now or buy after release?
 

Zabojnik

Member
is it a good idea to sill pledge right now?
whats the most reasonable pledge?
as far as I see the most important thing are the ships?
will we still be able to buy them after the game officially launched? is this some kind of pay to win thing?

is it more reasonable to pledge now or buy after release?

Moff, take a look at the OP. A lot of useful information in there. You'll find the answers to all your questions on previous pages.

Now is as good a time as any to pledge. If you don't want to spend too much get the "Digital Scout" package for $40, as it includes the full game, access to alfa and beta (+ hangar) and the basic ship Aurora. There is no pay to win. You'll be able to buy everything with in-game currenty.
 

CTLance

Member
You'll be burned out by the time Star Citizen is released. I'll gladly take that 300i or whatever have you off your hands. :p
I think so too, but I don't care. And my ships shall stay with me. All four of them. I just know a fifth will turn up eventually. One for each finger.
bbwoAss.png
 

Moff

Member
Moff, take a look at the OP. A lot of useful information in there. You'll find the answers to all your questions on previous pages.

Now is as good a time as any to pledge. If you don't want to spend too much get the "Digital Scout" package for $40, as it includes the full game, access to alfa and beta (+ hangar) and the basic ship Aurora. There is no pay to win. You'll be able to buy everything with in-game currenty.
I did read the Op and the last few pages. I dont feel my questions are answered there, sorry.
How is the game not pay to win if you can buy more powerful ships?
we are talking about a lot of dollars here, so I am sure these ships must be very good.

now my question is how will this work once the game is out?
will I be able to get ships that are as good as the really expensive ones when I progress in the game? because I would feel foolish if I buy a 300$ ship now and will get one after a few weeks of playing the game.

I would also feel foolish if I have only the chance to get a really good ship now wile pleding and miss that opportuniy, therefore never (or only after hundreds of hours investet) getting a real good ship when I am playing the final game.

also: I wouldnt really want to have a kickass ship right from the beginnig, because the game will probably be tuned for beginner ships at start, therefore making the game too easy.

these are my concerns right now, and again, I am sorry I didnt find the answers to them in the op and the last few pages.
but anyway, this looks very much like pay to win to me, the big question is is it only pay 2 win for pledgers, or after the game launches, too.
 

Daedardus

Member
I did read the Op and the last few pages. I dont feel my questions are answered there, sorry.
How is the game not pay to win if you can buy more powerful ships?
we are talking about a lot of dollars here, so I am sure these ships must be very good.

now my question is how will this work once the game is out?
will I be able to get ships that are as good as the really expensive ones when I progress in the game? because I would feel foolish if I buy a 300$ ship now and will get one after a few weeks of playing the game.

I would also feel foolish if I have only the chance to get a really good ship now wile pleding and miss that opportuniy, therefore never (or only after hundreds of hours investet) getting a real good ship when I am playing the final game.

also: I wouldnt really want to have a kickass ship right from the beginnig, because the game will probably be tuned for beginner ships at start, therefore making the game too easy.

these are my concerns right now, and again, I am sorry I didnt find the answers to them in the op and the last few pages.
but anyway, this looks very much like pay to win to me, the big question is is it only pay 2 win for pledgers, or after the game launches, too.

Well, first the ships operate in a rock/paper/scissors way. A bigger ship doesn't mean you're better than the rest. In fact, a bigger ship takes more skills to control and requires such high (in game money) fees that you need to be a decent player to turn a profit out of it.

The reason why they are so expensive is purely to fund the game. They found a way to make people them give money and people did that. You only have to buy a bigger ship fi you think you want to support the developers more than with a smaller package.

Every ship is obtainable in the game. There are no ships or weapons locked out of earning in-game, and that's how you actually should play the game imho.
 

Moff

Member
You only have to buy a bigger ship fi you think you want to support the developers more than with a smaller package.

Every ship is obtainable in the game. There are no ships or weapons locked out of earning in-game, and that's how you actually should play the game imho.
I agree, I'll just buy it on official release then, thanks.
 

Zabojnik

Member
Well, that's the promise at least.
Let's hope this is true.

I can understand that some people may be sceptical about that, but everyone who's been following the development from the start and has heard Chris Roberts talk about his vision for the game knows that P2W will never happen. It would be the very opposite of everything Star Citizen and Chris stand for. He hates P2W as much as the next guy and thanks to crowdfunding no greedy publisher is pushing him to adopt that model. Or any other exploitive model.

I agree, I'll just buy it on official release then, thanks.

Or you could buy the suggested Digital Scout package and have fun with the hangar, the dogfighting module, the planetside module, etc. as they get released along the way. 2015 is far away, sigh. Well, no pressure, you obviously know what's best for you. :)
 

epmode

Member
This is why I kind of feel that they haven't thought this thing through properly. The whole point of having players choose different starting locations in the game was load balancing, both on their server hardware and in the game universe (i.e. having multiple populated systems from the get go). And now we have a situation where a lot of backers (potentially 200,000+) will probably gravitate to this one system as their starting point so we're back to square one.

This isn't a problem when the entire game is designed around instancing so that there are never more than X players in an area. If you're trying to find certain people in an overcrowded zone, there are ways to influence the instancing system to place you in your friend's (or target's) instance.
 

Daedardus

Member
This isn't a problem when the entire game is designed around instancing so that there are never more than X players in an area. If you're trying to find certain people in an overcrowded zone, there are ways to influence the instancing system to place you in your friend's (or target's) instance.

The actual ships may be instanced but the economy isn't, and that's what he is talking about.
 

epmode

Member
The actual ships may be instanced but the economy isn't, and that's what he is talking about.

The game design is to have players replace NPCs on a one to one basis as they log in. The player base will be dwarfed by NPCs, by the way. The economy is being designed so that players can influence it in certain areas but they can't control large portions because they simply won't have the numbers. This isn't EVE.

So I guess the answer is that if it winds up being bad for the economy to have so many players in one area (which is yet to be seen), you won't have to go far to find someplace more reasonable.
 

Daedardus

Member
The game design is to have players replace NPCs on a one to one basis as they log in. The player base will be dwarfed by NPCs, by the way. The economy is being designed so that players can influence it in certain areas but they can't control it because they simply won't have the numbers. This isn't EVE.

No, what he (or it may be CTLance) actually meant was that if a huge number of players get concentrated in one system, the economy on that part will have to make up for the huge number of players. This probably means low yields, low stocks of finished goods and low selling prices. Eventually this will cause players to fly to other systems though, but they all made their starting base in a system that isn't very profitable. Flying home would require more fuel than normal, seeing as you operate always operate in different systems.

Spreading it out a bit balances the initial economy, so that the system doesn't need to take immediate balancing measures.
 

epmode

Member
I think it's a little premature to get concerned about local population versus the economy until we get a better look at how the game economy actually works. We're still two years out, after all.

It bears mentioning that they'll be designing the game around a much larger player population than the 200,000 backers and I'd be shocked if they don't take large player counts into account for certain popular systems because this happens in every MMO ever.
 

Daedardus

Member
I think it's a little premature to get concerned about local population versus the economy until we get a better look at how the game economy actually works. We're still two years out, after all.

It bears mentioning that they'll be designing the game around a much larger player population than the 200,000 backers and I'd be shocked if they don't take large player counts into account for certain popular systems because this happens in every MMO ever.

But they are actually encouraging backers to make it their home instead of traditional MMO's where starter places should be spread out.
 

rohnjambo

Neo Member
i can see this game eventually ascending to WoW proportions of popularity and life-sucking immersion.

stoked for this game, been waiting for one like this for years.
 

Daedardus

Member
i can see this game eventually ascending to WoW proportions of popularity and life-sucking immersion.

stoked for this game, been waiting for one like this for years.

I doubt that. WoW could run on a toaster. This requires PC's that could toast your whole desk.
 

Daedardus

Member
There are over 50 million PC gamers out there with a 7870 or more. Still increasing.

Do you have hard data to back this up? The only thing I could find was that AIB GPU sales extrapolated over the year were something like 70 million. Of course, this could be any model of any series and it also includes the desktops you can buy in stores, which usually include a discrete, but not very powerful GPU. A big chunk of the sales is also taken up by gamers in China.

Anyway, the point wasn't that Star Citizen couldn't become popular over the years. I believe it will reach a rather significant following, or generate at least decent interest from the semi-core audience. However, reaching those numbers from popular MMO's will be very hard. You'd need a significant install base to have 12 million players a day. I somehow doubt that can be reached. Most top end GPU sales are from already established pc gamers upgrading to a new rig.

And another important thing is the fact that it is a space sim. It's way too nerdy and hard to get in for a casual to pick it up. Unlike a game like LoL and WoW where I have seen some of the most stupidest people play and succeed.
 

Vlodril

Member
Do you have hard data to back this up? The only thing I could find was that AIB GPU sales extrapolated over the year were something like 70 million. Of course, this could be any model of any series and it also includes the desktops you can buy in stores, which usually include a discrete, but not very powerful GPU. A big chunk of the sales is also taken up by gamers in China.

Anyway, the point wasn't that Star Citizen couldn't become popular over the years. I believe it will reach a rather significant following, or generate at least decent interest from the semi-core audience. However, reaching those numbers from popular MMO's will be very hard. You'd need a significant install base to have 12 million players a day. I somehow doubt that can be reached. Most top end GPU sales are from already established pc gamers upgrading to a new rig.

And another important thing is the fact that it is a space sim. It's way too nerdy and hard to get in for a casual to pick it up. Unlike a game like LoL and WoW where I have seen some of the most stupidest people play and succeed.

Why on earth would they need 12 millions players a day? What?
 

Moff

Member
And another important thing is the fact that it is a space sim. It's way too nerdy and hard to get in for a casual to pick it up. Unlike a game like LoL and WoW where I have seen some of the most stupidest people play and succeed.
well, before WoW, MMOs were considered "nerdy and hard to get in", too.

But I dont expect it to become as popular as WoW either.
 

Daedardus

Member
Why on earth would they need 12 millions players a day? What?
i can see this game eventually ascending to WoW proportions of popularity and life-sucking immersion

Baseline argument. I just extrapolated it to LoL players.
He's just moving goals around. Don't bother.

I think people thought I was rambling on just to ramble on the subject. I was only in fact arguing why it couldn't reach WoW/LoL levels. That's were the pc install base comes in too. Sorry if I offended the master race. I will commit sudoku immediately.
well, before WoW, MMOs were considered "nerdy and hard to get in", too..

Mostly because WoW targeted that casual market. I think they will need to find the very careful line where accessibility and complexity meet. I'd hate to see it dumbed down, but I don't want another EVE either.

Anyway, consider this closed. I'm wondering if we'll get weekly (bug fix) patches on friday, or that they will come when they met important milestones in development of the hangar.
 

Sentenza

Member
I think people thought I was rambling on just to ramble on the subject. I was only in fact arguing why it couldn't reach WoW/LoL levels. That's were the pc install base comes in too. Sorry if I offended the master race.
Your original claim was that no one buys PCs anymore, then when others argued otherwise you had to set an unrealistic arbitrary goal of 12 million of daily users as the only way to prove the opposite (which by the way is far above even what WoW achieved, with a peak of 12 million active users, which is not the same thing at all).

I have no idea why so many people on this forum feel completely legitimate to spout nonsense about the PC market and then when confronted about their baseless claims think it's a legitimate strategy to shield themselves behind some "HURR DURR PC ELITISTS MASTER RACE ARE HARASSING ME" silly nonsense.

I will commit sudoku immediately.
Why not bukkake?
 

bj00rn_

Banned
He's just moving goals around. Don't bother.

Yeah, no offense to him but I started to follow the trail to type up a reply, but after a few posts I had completely lost my train of thought so I gave up, I even had to look at the thread title, LOL.

Anyway, I wish there was more incentive to use this module.. But ok
 

Daedardus

Member
Your original claim was that no one buys PCs anymore, then when others argued otherwise you had to set an unrealistic arbitrary goal of 12 million of daily users as the only way to prove the opposite (which by the way is far above even what WoW achieved, with a peak of 12 million active users, which is not the same thing at all).

I have no idea why so many people on this forum feel completely legitimate to spout nonsense about the PC market and then when confronted about their baseless claims think it's a legitimate strategy to shield themselves behind some "HURR DURR PC ELITISTS MASTER RACE ARE HARASSING ME" silly nonsense.

I think you totally misunderstood me. Of course PC's still get sold. 'Who buys a PC anymore' was a sarcastic and cynical view that all the casual had gone to tablets and cheap laptops. It was never meant as an argument that PC gaming is failing and that this game needs a 12 million userbase to succeed. It was to compare the userbase of this game to something like an enormous MMO, which that first guy said.

And my claims aren't exactly baseless, I spent more than hour googling all those pieces together, but it's still hard to find research about install bases and how those relate to players.

And to be honest I don't own any home console. I only have this top-of-the-line laptop and that's get used all the time for gaming. Seppuku is mostly used if you brought shame to the family, and the sudoku part is a rather unknown meme. Know that I'm the biggest poster in this thread and that the guy has 200% of my support. I'm sorry if this came of as a console fanboy rant. I shouldn't combine facts and sarcasm in my next posts anymore ;).
 
Top Bottom