Great point. I concur.LTI is not going away...Let's take a quick look at why.
Big backers (anyone spending more than $100) are quick to point out that the possibility of losing a real money pledge is a serious concern to them. In fact, the more people spend, the less risk they want to take with regards to losing the ship they pledged for.
Whales (people spending $500 to $1000+) certainly fall in the category as well. They backed a game for a TON on money...much more then they would it they had waited to buy it after it goes live. CIG is desperate for those people, as they are the ones that will keep buying ships. If they were to lose these people, because of a lack of something as simple (and supposedly as meaningless) as LTI, it would be extremely difficult to get backers to replace them.
Yes, CIG has had an increase in backers lately. I think there were 1.2-1.4 million backers when I joined a few years ago, and now it is approaching 1.9 million. Yes, that's big, but how many are really spending lots of dosh? Those that are are going to have the same concerns that older whales have...they won't back a game where the pledge they make can be lost easily. CIG is offering a route to LTI via CCU lets these newer people buy older ships they missed the concept sale for, yet still get LTI. Since they will be buying many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in ships, allowing them to obtain LTI is just good business at this stage of the game as it lets these new backers to buy up lots of older ships. Ships they might decide to buy in-game only if there was no route to LTI
Finally, there are Grand Admirals...people who have dropped the equivalent of a week-long trip to Hawaii for two on the game. To these people, LTI will actually make a difference in the game. They have so many ships that maintaining insurance on all of them would actually hinter their ability to actually play the game and acquire wealth in the game because it would be impossible to maintain that fleet. CIG REALLY REALLY wants to keep these people happy. They don't just buy ships, they buy multiple copies or all the variants of the same ship. Without LTI, these people would start taking a hard look at what they want in their fleet and pare down to what they want, and either sell off they remainder to people who want that ship and can't get, or they will melt and use credit to buy any concept ships that make a difference to their fleet makeup, possibly resulting in another melt. This means the people who spend the most won't be opening their wallets ever again...not a place CIG wants to be.
Honestly, I expect CIG to pop in at the end of Alpha (or maybe Beta) and announce that anyone who backed gets LTI on their ship...but it won't happen until ship sales stop because they want people to keep buying those LTI tokens.
I'm also sad. I could have taken my wife to Hawaii?
*gulp*
Don't think about it Owl, don't think about it...