Gamer salt is not always what it seems

[Bruttle]

I have been cruising around the SC forums for a couple years now. It seems that with every turn, CIG takes a huge hit. Everything is the end of the world to someone and every choice just plain ruins the game. At least that's what it looks like. Don't get me wrong, some decisions are shit bag choices and I find myself wondering if there is a pair of active brain cells among the lot of CIG employees. On the forums though, everything is doomsday prophecy and falling skies.

It's easy for a reader to get the wrong impression. A random viewer could quickly assess from the forums that the game couldn't possibly succeed with all this hate and discontent. I mean, CIG is obviously making decisions based on exactly what the backers don't want. This is particularly applicable during the anniversary sale. The flame is real. Hell, I've even been on there criticizing CIG (land claims should have been available for credit as well dammit).

There is always more to the story. I saw a video a while back that permanently put internet forums and gamer news feeds into perspective for me. Things are definitely not always as they seem. The "popular opinion" is almost never as universal as it seems. The whole thing is duplicitous in nature. Gamers can be very vocal about what they feel is fair, but at the same time be the very driving force behind the behavior they are so offended by.

We all know that people don't always practice what they preach, but I ran across a video from Ben Cousins that puts words to what we always kind of knew. It's a bit long, but I personally found it fascinating. It wasn't the gamer behavior so much as the facts and figures about who is vocal and who is not. The numbers were surprising. This is his talk from GDC.

Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with companies pushing hype and leveraging advantage for financial gain. I do understand why they do it though. Sometimes, they need to do it just to keep the lights on. Sometimes, they are about to be fired and it is the only way the game can live. It sucks, but if players are unwilling to pay for their entertainment, something has to happen. There is no such thing as free. Somebody has to pay for it somewhere.

That's where the root of it lies for me. As much as I dislike P2W, as much as I dislike the cheap tactics that developers employ, as much as I disapprove of hype as a marketing tool, I HATE the concept of "free" even more. People expect it. When they don't get it, they whine and cry and scream on the forums to the point that it seems the entire consumer base has taken up pitchforks. The reality is, the vocal majority is actually the minority despite what it looks like. It seems like a lot because they're just really, really loud.

That's because for some reason, they feel entitled to it. They think that they should have hundreds of hours of entertainment without paying a dime. They don't consider that bills need to be payed. They don't care that running a business is like throwing money out the window and hoping someone picks it up and brings it back in. They just want their free stuff and they have all the time in the world to sit and post about it. Meanwhile, for every one of them, there's hundreds that are happily playing the game with their cash shop items.

[/rant]

TLDR: If you like a product, ffs pay for it like a decent person. If everyone did that we wouldn't have this problem. The video is pretty informative. People piss me off.

 

[FluffyVonRage]

Age old return to the concept of 'Silent majority' - This is why people shutting down bullshit artists, and whining fucks on platforms like Spectrum and Reddit are so important - Stopping the poisoning of a community by people who expect to put in $40, then get everything on plate.
Personally, I'd rather pay money to help develop a game, then continue paying a subscription fee to keep the servers running, and the game expanding. I don't expect any advantages from that, but it would be nice to see people being a bit more balanced in their views, re: PayToWin in a skill based game.

As an example, i get a definite amount of enjoyment out of stomping premium vehicles in games like warthunder - you work up to the skill level, and what you'll consistently see is that skill based games will always be won by the people who have worked for it.

 

[Crymsan]

Lets be honest most free to play games raise so much more per player than the old fashion sub models, whilst the usual cost is just to make whatever grind faster rather than giving you an in combat benefit. That being said the community obviously has limits see the EA incident.

Star citizen has pay to do better aspects if for no other reasons than they have to give you a reason to buy the ships. Its not like warthunder or world of tanks there are no free ships, everyone has to pay. The money raised has been outstanding and should have been enough to finish the game but since they didn't know how much they would get an awful lot has been wasted. So they have to release new ships and now even land to keep things going. The bigger ships are not always better or at least require more maintenance crew and so on but in fighter terms its much more obvious. Why would you pay more for that fighter if it wasn't better? (Vandul ships exempted they are pay much more for worse).

The early bigger ships all had turret placement weakspots so they were vulnerable (or at least potentially so) to single seater fighters. This even applies to the Polaris and then they release the Hammerhead. The Hammerhead even has a lower minimum crew requirement which is a big attraction. Its sensor are worse as is its range but even so. There is a turreted fighter with 4 size 3 weopons on the turret when 4 size 3 weopons in total used to be the gold standard for a fighter.
The game is in early alpha (yes I know 5 years), but even so there has been creep in capability in my eyes.

There are gaps in industry ships like just for instance: a smaller or larger cruicible, a medium sized miner, an alternative salvager (smaller presumably) an alternative fuel ships, an alternative to the Genesis (the forgotten stepchild). The Endeavor is very very expensive when you add the modules in, this leaves scope for some smaller options or at least dedicated ships to cover some of those, like augmenting, spice growing and so on. It would be nice if some of these actually came along instead of another fighter. (Yeah fighters must sell better).

I even think you could have a smaller pioneer it would just need to be restocked with minerals, defended and take longer but it could be done.

 

[Thalstan]

The early bigger ships all had turret placement weakspots so they were vulnerable (or at least potentially so) to single seater fighters. This even applies to the Polaris and then they release the Hammerhead. The Hammerhead even has a lower minimum crew requirement which is a big attraction. Its sensor are worse as is its range but even so. There is a turreted fighter with 4 size 3 weopons on the turret when 4 size 3 weopons in total used to be the gold standard for a fighter.
The game is in early alpha (yes I know 5 years), but even so there has been creep in capability in my eyes.

Small note...the Hammerhead has 6 turrets with 4 S4 weapons. This is the same as the main weapon systems of the Connie on each turret. If they get turrets working, fighters will have a hard time living in this fire zone unless they swarm it under. This is the counter to small pirate groups....for instance, a pirate group has 5-10 fighters and a Caterpillar.

 

[Bambooza]

There really is a balance between paying the bills and destroying the player community that supports your game. We look at games like Diablo 3 which tweeked the loot drop rates to favor the use of the auction house so they could scrap 15% off the transaction amounts. We have most recently Dice tweeking the drop rate of cards as well as instead of a exponential curve that favors the bottom it favors the top so that it pushes players to their market place to buy cards to stay competitive. Both actions had a very toxic effect on the game to the point were Blizzard removed their auction house from Diablo 3 but it was too late for most of the community and the game player rate plummeted quickly. Dice and EA's firestorm is still intense and the early sales show its performing poorly.
Then you have games like World of Warcraft, and Destiny that do the cosmetic addons well. It does nothing to effect the game play, drop rates or the perceived fairness of the player community while also allowing the development house to increase their revenues.

Its going to be interesting to see how Star Citizen balances the in game ship costs as they have allowed us to purchase these ships prior to the game release and thus they have a specific world value. The only caveat is that hopefully the majority know they are really just supporting ongoing development support and not buying a specific ship.

As for the Hammerhead I am vocal in my feelings that it is detrimental to the game balance so far established in that it will greatly limit the usability of most of the ships in any sort of PVP capacity.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Argh, shit!

I'm a Salty Canary!

 

[Bruttle]

There really is a balance between paying the bills and destroying the player community that supports your game.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I think that pendulum swung way too far in the wrong direction. Developers found they could squeeze more money out of F2P P2W than they could out of a subscription base. Some games lately haven't even really tried to hide it. Honestly, SC is one of them.

On day one, I can load up all 3,584 scu on my BMM. I can then set up a multiple ship escort with my own personal AI (courtesy of extra game packages), and deliver all that cargo. Or, I can hit the nearest nebula with my Starfarer and load up on fuel to immediately sell for fat cash. If I get interference, I can pull out my Hammerhead and extract my cold hard revenge from the poor sap that decided to start their pirate career with me. This is all possible at release. There is absolutely no way you can argue that it's not P2W.

P2W isn't always a bad thing though. It becomes a bad thing when the developers make something either impossible to get, or prohibitively hard to get without cash. So far, it looks like UEC is going to be fairly easy to get and baseline spenders will be able to catch up fairly quickly. Some games make it so difficult to make currency, it becomes a choice of spending either 5 days grinding or $5 cash.

As you said, there is a balance. There is a line between necessary funding and greed. There is also need to balance fair prices with fair products. Companies over the last few years have been blatantly crossing those lines and I think we're all a bit sore from it. I think that's why so many of us are quick to judge the second anything even remotely looks like P2W.

That's because we have seen where that road leads. We have seen beautiful games ruined because of it. It can be so incredibly damaging and nobody wants to see that happen with this one. We need this game to work.

 

[Bruttle]

Argh, shit!

I'm a Salty Canary!

At the risk of shit posting my own thread into derailment.... I couldn't resist...

 

[Raither]

"There really is a balance between paying the bills and destroying the player community that supports your game."

This.

I'm all for CiG paying the bills. That was never in question. I fully support funding and will continue to as long as I believe in the methodology.

It was the omission lie, the deception. That is what pissed me off.

Not telling or warning customers that melting their ships for CCU for land claims would result in failure, leaving backers with ships that had to be re-purchased through token or real $, that was just fucking world class stupid on so many levels. It left the community was horribly divided and misinformed. There is more to this, but no real point in hashing all of it. Have to be honest, it pissed me off quite a bit, mostly because deception and betrayal only suck when they are not expected, and I did not expect the shitty EA tactics I saw for Land Claim sale

All CiG had to do was implement 1 land claim for CCU per account, and 9 more allowable for cash per account to help funding. I think this would have gone miles towards preventing a shitstorm. Still would have been some whimpering and whining but not all out anger like their forums saw. It would have resulted in me CCUing for one and buying one with real $. Instead, they got no sale at all re: Land Claims. I will still buy ships etc, but not if it is handled the way Land Claims was handled

If this is the first stages of the CiG Board of Directors turning SC into another EA moneymaking machine and not giving them a choice... sad times are closer on the horizon than we think, and we don't even have a game yet.

 

[Thalstan]

This is not the phase where we do game balancing. This is still alpha where we are introducing the features that the game needs/is planned to have. One of those features was an anti-fighter platform/area denial platform/anti-pirate ship. Fighters were never supposed to be the end all/be all of PvP/piracy. In fact, they are the entry to piracy, and successful pirates will be move on to bigger/better ships as funds allow. Ultimately, fighters are supposed to be powerful enough to do a job, but cheap enough to be expendable. However, that does not mean the hammerhead doesn't have weaknesses.

Thoughts on fighting the Hammerhead.

The turrets are big and I don't see this ship maneuvering. That means targeted high speed runs against the turrets should be viable. Once a turret goes down, it loses a big chunk of it's firepower. However, you are going to need ships that can survive these high speed runs or be willing to trade multiple fighters for each turret. That means Cutlasses, Connies, and maybe even Freelancers as your attack ships. Boost up to max speed, go decoupled and fire are you enter range and then flip to get a few more shots off.

Second, they can't be everywhere at once and they won't be maneuvering well, so if you can put whatever they are guarding between you and the hammerhead, it will be very difficult for them to change their position to get to you. If there are two, they will need to make the choice between supporting each other or supporting the ships they are escorting.

Another way is to go in with a heavy ship and try and go toe to toe with it in a ship like a Polaris or Idris.

A third way is to use eclipses to get in and deliver a stealth strike. 2-3 eclipses and their 6-9 torpedoes will probably eliminate that ship.

Finally, remember that ships will cost money to operate. If something is worth having a hammerhead or two as escort, then whatever they are guarding is either worth it, or presents so great a threat that you have to eliminate it, or you need to run away from it. So if you see a hammerheads escorting some mechant convoys, then there is probably a good amount of value there. If they are escorting capital ships, that means the force is strong enough that it needs to be eliminated or you need to bug out. In either case though, you will need a strong enough force to combat it. So if you are looking to do a little piracy against something guarded by Hammerheads, then your pirate ship better be an Idris, Javelin or something bigger with appropriate support ships.

 

[FluffyVonRage]

I'd also say that a wing of hurricanes trying to stay out of range of the turrets while chipping away with 4X S3 guns will probably be quite effective, since worrying about shielding is going to be less of a concern, and those turrets look very big and glass covered.

Can't shoot you if the operator is bleeding out in the corridor behind the gun, And it's not like they'll have brought many spare crew..

 

[Bruttle]

Ultimately, fighters are supposed to be powerful enough to do a job, but cheap enough to be expendable.

I think this hits on one of the main balancing tools that most people forget and might just keep this thing in some sense of equality. In most games, once a player, clan, org, or guild has a really powerful ship/vehicle/etc, you spawn it and the only financial risk to running around with it is the risk of it being destroyed. Most games allow the deployment and use of these for free. You only pay if someone can manage to overpower it.

Star Citizen, on the other hand, incurs an operating cost with its ships. It will take boatloads of cash to run around in these powerful ships. So it won't be fiscally worth it to joyride around. Even if you get something out of it, if it isn't a big haul, you'll still be operating at a loss. So if CIG plays their cards right, they can still find balance.

 

[supitza]

As you said, there is a balance. There is a line between necessary funding and greed. There is also need to balance fair prices with fair products.

So far it's been 6 years and $170 million. At this point in time, Star Citizen doesn't look like a $170M game to me.

 

[Bambooza]

Thoughts on fighting the Hammerhead.

I would love to discuss this in far more detail but I do not wish to derail this thread as Bruttle has brought up an interesting topic that should be respected.

 

[Talonsbane]

Personally, I love the Hammerhead & its defensive role against fighters. I feel that it brings a wonderful balance to the game play in relation to all of the possible fighters that could have & would have been used by pirates & bandits against those simply transporting cargo or personnel. They have stated that the Hammerhead is not a counter against Cap ships. While it's turrets can destroy incoming torpedoes & missiles if they are effectively handled, there is no way it can defend itself against incoming fire from the main cannon of an Idris-M.

I also feel that those who support the game more should receive benefits based on how much they have contributed. Nothing game breaking, but adding cosmetic perks like access to buy special ship skins, uniforms & slight reputation increases would be wonderful.

Also, while they have stated that all that would be required to play the game is the purchase of the starter package, I believe that them keeping the subscriber system in place after launch would be good for the maintaining of the game afterwards. Being a subscriber grants slight benefits & a monthly allotment of funds, but nothing that can't be matched by a little more effort in game or having somebody that is a subscriber give our heads ups to things they learn are coming up in advance.

 

[Passeeo]

So far it's been 6 years and $170 million. At this point in time, Star Citizen doesn't look like a $170M game to me.

It's up to $170m today.

There is a big difference between having $170m to spend on development at the start of development as opposed to acquiring funding as you go along.

This isn't a game. It's the earliest stages of alpha.

Also game devs don't typically have to divert time away from making their projects to do fund-raising along the way to make sure they they can keep development moving for the duration of the project.

You say this game cost $170mill yet they haven't spent that on development yet.
People need to learn the difference between money raised vs money spent on the project.

 

[Bruttle]

So far it's been 6 years and $170 million. At this point in time, Star Citizen doesn't look like a $170M game to me.

That's true. In my mind, it makes sense though if I take two things into consideration. The first is how much time has been wasted due to going back and redoing old work. It sucks to see all that work get thrown out, but the results can't be denied. The game and the ships look much better.

The second thing is the background systems. They've spent a ton of time working on the tools needed to make their job easier and quicker in the future. It's a matter of more investment now for higher returns later down the line. The problem is, we don't see that part. We have also been hearing that same excuse for a couple years now. So even though it's a reason, it is starting to sound like a broken record.

 

[Bambooza]

So far it's been 6 years and $170 million. At this point in time, Star Citizen doesn't look like a $170M game to me.

No it really doesn't but from what I can tell that is mostly doe to the fact that the game itself is no longer even close to the original pitched game and has had sever growing pains. I would go so far as to say that the game we know now and are looking forward to has not even been in development for more then 2 years. The prior 3 to 4 years were missteps and mistakes in attempting to push forward the original concept with outside development houses which would have worked if the money wasn't so huge. And it is on this note that I am glad that the leadership team on Chris's team has as much experience as they had for if it was a younger team then there wouldn't be anything left and the company would have folded. To go about changing the scope of a project after its initial concept due to so much capital is a dangerous thing and I believe now they are on the right track and we will continue to see huge improvements to the game play, ship releases as we get closer to release. Release is still several years away but its still reachable and far more possible then it was 3 years ago. One of the best signs is that the scale of the game hasn't grown in the past two years now they are are focused on adding content and assets which leads to a completion.

 

[Blind Owl]

TLDR: If you like a product, ffs pay for it like a decent person. If everyone did that we wouldn't have this problem. The video is pretty informative. People piss me off.

Well said. I actually read the whole thing, and I couldn't agree more.

 

[Sraika]

Ha, that video is from battlefield heroes. That game was actually kinda fun. Like a cross between TF2 and battlefield.

Thing is, tho, SC is a big, and ambitious, game. They have a lot of money, sure, but they have to invent a bunch of tech stuff that hasn't been done before, and they have to do it without fucking up the game too badly. Is this a 170 million dollar game right now? No. Will it be eventually? Yeah.

On the other hand, at a certain point, you have to step back and say, sure, all these extra things would be cool, but let's get the base game in place first. I understand adding in planets, once they had the tech to do them, letting you explore them came naturally. Hell, even land claims comes naturally b/c of the way they generate the planets. From there, you have to make the jump to the pioneer, so that you can use those land claims. Then, of course, people will want different stuff they can use with those outposts, like different modules and whatnot. Now, this is where CIG said, yeah, we want all that, but we wont be doing that for a while. Should they have stopped earlier? I dunno. But there are other examples where the answer is probably yes.