Honestly that would be fantastic or maybe a mission where you can get a beat up P-72 or something with no loadout. People forget you don't need to start out with everything honestly i would die for that level of progression but i don't have enough time in life to do all that.
Ship prices in UEC
- Thread starter Floating Cloud
- Start date
SullyQuindarius
Admiral
I think the high end prices (i.e Hammerhead) are about what they should be. But starter ships could be a good bit lower. Maybe 100-150K. And then have starter profession ships at about 750K-1M.
The price for the Hammerhead seems fair. I like the idea of big ships costing in the hundreds of millions as to encourage people and organizations banding together to buy one (assuming someone in the organization has not already bought the ship with real money..).
But starters? No.. Just no. I mean.. do the math. If the price of the Aurora remains at 200 000 UEC that means that, assuming a mission takes about half an hour (and not an hour or more like in the demo, which felt like Walk Citizen more than anything, but I assume they were slower on purpose to showcase what they have been working on), you'd make around 7000 to 8000 UEC per hour, and that's assuming mission payout is that high and not like now - 500 to a 1000 UEC. The number 7000 is more likely, since you have to factor in ammo and fuel. It would take you around 28 or so hours of non-stop play to afford just an Aurora. Given that most people can't devote that much time, let us, for the sake of the argument, assume that they have two hours to play undisturbed - it would take you 14 days to get an Aurora. An Aurora.. Which is quite frankly stupid. It was Chris Roberts himself who said that it would take you around two weeks of normally playing the game to afford a basic Constellation... And yet now - it seems it would be MUCH longer than that.
As for the insurance - it can lapse. Some people might miss the "Renew insurance" prompts or whatever they implement as a means of reminding you. And then they are left with a huge grind.. If it takes you around two weeks to earn 200 000 UEC WITH a ship.. Imagine the credit gains without one. I rather doubt bartending missions will have 4000 UEC payout.
I bought this game because it was a space sim. It's all about the ships. I didn't buy Bartender Citizen or Delivery Man Citizen (although given the missions we have now...). A bartender mini-game would be cool if you are hanging out with a bunch of your friends on a 600i or a Phoenix to just..dick around. But as a main means of making money? No, thank you. I'd much rather serving on someones ship or being a bartender or whatever be an option rather than mandatory.
People are already unhappy about the prices - AngryJoe for example. And he has a rather big following.. And that's just one guy..Does this game need anymore bad press and "It's a grind fest" and "Wow, this is so much P2W" comments? I mean, sure, they've been getting bad press for ages and people are still into this game (which is some kind of phenomenon if you ask me) but that luck, or goodwill or whatever you want to call it is bound to run out at some point.
I'm getting an AC Odyssey vibe from all this - a good game with gimped XP gain in order to promote XP boosts and other micro - transactions... I really don't want that for SC.
You gotta factor in the bigger the ships you get the more money missions and cargo runs are going to give you. so yeah to a guy who just started the game 200k seems like alot and you are not going to need to only do bartending i guarantee. Also if you ran out of insurance that means you have already put in a ton of time and that 200k im sure you have already earned if not a lot more. i think the starter ships are really there just for the people who want like every ship in the game. here are ideas of things that could potentially earn people money in game.
find and deliver cargo.
bartending
military drop missions in a fight zone
Finding precious artifacts in a ruin.
investigate a crime in the city
go steal someone elses ship(pirate)
loot a pirates vehicle or ship and bring it back to mission giver
airline attendant
airline pilot
run a machine which refines salvage or ore in a factory
the list could go on.
seriously this game is really pretty out there. yes you want a ship if you forgot to pay insurance and you blew all your cash maybe you need to pay the price. virtual world consequences.
look at other games( ill use ffxi and phantasy star online)
ffxi: what happens if you have no gil and your weapon breaks. you have to go h2h or fight monsters for crap gil.
ffxi: what happens if you run out of gil and you need to get to a place to farm more. need to walk their or farm something thats worth less or sell gear for pennies.
pso: what happens with no mesta and you are near the boss and die without a telepipe. you have to walk all the way from the main entrance all the way back to the boss.
pso: what happens when you have no money and you looted sold all the items on a level and only the boss is left and there are no mana or health potions in your inventory? you cant kill the boss you have to turn off game turn ot back on and grind cash for potions.
i guarantee every game has their consequence you fail to pay your bills its going to bite you in the rear.
I've seen too many online games design their economies top-down instead of bottom-up, then not understand why they struggle to get new players into the game, so they move to giving them booster gear and items that eliminate the need to interact with over 60% of the game.
I don't want to set SC go that route so I'd rather them build the economy bottom-up. Yes, people with more money, resources, and friends will have an advantage, that is the way life is, no matter what scheme or scam is used having money, resources, and friends will always be advantageous over being a broke loaner.
Auroras, Mustangs, and any other starter ships that get added should all be from ~20k (such as a Drake starter ship) to ~100k (for a starter ship from like Anvil), and the current ones being in the 40-75k range.
After reading through the comments, while I do understand both sides of the argument, the conclusion I came away with is simple:
CIG should have thought about that pricing a lot more, or haven't shown it at all!
I think someone at CiG dropped the ball on pricing. Or their cat walked on the numpad... Anyways, I don't think that the pricing we saw is in any way representative of what we will get later.
Payouts for missions and trading were absolutely crazy in the last patches. Going from 20UEC to 400UEC for the same "take this box of shit (literally) off the planet" mission. I think they have no clue where the pricing will end up.
The 200k for the Aurora feels ridiculous at the moment. 60K for a totally empty base Aurora modell, maybe. I can't say if 200K is really a lot, cos I haven't seen what's in game yet, but that number just feels too high. I want a "sim" in the Space Flight part of the game, not in the reality-sim of "earning below minimum wage unless you have friends in high places" lol
I don't think ship prices should be based on what the guns in the game cost, just because the guns in the game cost similar to real world USD values. That's just dumb.
I think good weapons (like assault rifles) should cost as much as an Aurora or an Aurora should cost as much as a very decent automatic gun. It shouldn't be priced like a toy you can buy after 5 minutes of gameplay... On the other hand, a simple ballistic pistol should cost as low as something you can just buy after a few hours of playtime, so you can get into other kinds of missions. Than there could be black market pricing, smuggling to get it cheaper, and so on...
Anyways, before I go off topic with gun pricing, what I'm trying to say is that items in games are balanced differently to the real world for a reason, and they should be. They need to have VALUE to the player. Currently in PU, ships are just like respawning in an FPS shooter. They are valueless, and taken for granted. I like the idea that you can screw up so hard that you end up shipless for a little bit...
Anyways, back to the topic:
Low bar for entry, high bar for professional gear. That seems to work best, and keep players in the game. Starter ships, and especially profession starter ships will need to be priced low for this to happen. A starter mining ship shouldn't cost as much as a mid range escort carrier with 2 hornets included...
BTW, we still don't know things like how much will we earn in playing SQ42? Will it be enough to buy a size 2 laser, a Mustang Beta, or a Connie or a Condo on Earth?
Chris said that we will get payed for service, as one of the advantages of playing SQ42 before jumping into SC.
Keep in mind that it's still an MMO without a storyline or fixed goals. Most goals we set ourselves will involve obtaining items/ships to get to that goal. They will need to price out stuff in a way that keeps us in the game. The question is, by how much...
In the end, whether it feels too grindy or just right or too fast, is of personal preference. Some will enjoy grinding out 5500 missions to get a insert-ship-name-here, some will hate that they have to do 50 missions just to get a really rare and cool looking alien mega-atom-blaster-gun, and more importantly, some will Pay for a shortcut. They will need to keep making money after "release", and they need those who have more money than time to do so. They said this before, so I guess it's about time for the empty wallets of the backers to hit the fan, and realize this.
The important part will be to see how well balanced that price/time/shortcut is, and than start shouting about it if it's really unfair to those who have more time than money.
As far as I know, apart from buying ships IRL, there is only an option to buy in-game money with IRL money. No XP/stat/reward-boosters and shit like that. So I'm okay with it for the moment.
I don't like this, but with the death of the monthly-sub based system in MMO world, I'm all for it if it means they won't limit gameplay with paywalls or limit content as they do nowdays in many other "F2P" MMOs.
TLDR.: Looking at the drastic changes in past mission-rewards, I think they went with more or less random prices on those ships, and there is nothing to really worry about, yet...
CIG should have thought about that pricing a lot more, or haven't shown it at all!
I think someone at CiG dropped the ball on pricing. Or their cat walked on the numpad... Anyways, I don't think that the pricing we saw is in any way representative of what we will get later.
Payouts for missions and trading were absolutely crazy in the last patches. Going from 20UEC to 400UEC for the same "take this box of shit (literally) off the planet" mission. I think they have no clue where the pricing will end up.
The 200k for the Aurora feels ridiculous at the moment. 60K for a totally empty base Aurora modell, maybe. I can't say if 200K is really a lot, cos I haven't seen what's in game yet, but that number just feels too high. I want a "sim" in the Space Flight part of the game, not in the reality-sim of "earning below minimum wage unless you have friends in high places" lol
I don't think ship prices should be based on what the guns in the game cost, just because the guns in the game cost similar to real world USD values. That's just dumb.
I think good weapons (like assault rifles) should cost as much as an Aurora or an Aurora should cost as much as a very decent automatic gun. It shouldn't be priced like a toy you can buy after 5 minutes of gameplay... On the other hand, a simple ballistic pistol should cost as low as something you can just buy after a few hours of playtime, so you can get into other kinds of missions. Than there could be black market pricing, smuggling to get it cheaper, and so on...
Anyways, before I go off topic with gun pricing, what I'm trying to say is that items in games are balanced differently to the real world for a reason, and they should be. They need to have VALUE to the player. Currently in PU, ships are just like respawning in an FPS shooter. They are valueless, and taken for granted. I like the idea that you can screw up so hard that you end up shipless for a little bit...
Anyways, back to the topic:
Low bar for entry, high bar for professional gear. That seems to work best, and keep players in the game. Starter ships, and especially profession starter ships will need to be priced low for this to happen. A starter mining ship shouldn't cost as much as a mid range escort carrier with 2 hornets included...
BTW, we still don't know things like how much will we earn in playing SQ42? Will it be enough to buy a size 2 laser, a Mustang Beta, or a Connie or a Condo on Earth?
Chris said that we will get payed for service, as one of the advantages of playing SQ42 before jumping into SC.
Keep in mind that it's still an MMO without a storyline or fixed goals. Most goals we set ourselves will involve obtaining items/ships to get to that goal. They will need to price out stuff in a way that keeps us in the game. The question is, by how much...
In the end, whether it feels too grindy or just right or too fast, is of personal preference. Some will enjoy grinding out 5500 missions to get a insert-ship-name-here, some will hate that they have to do 50 missions just to get a really rare and cool looking alien mega-atom-blaster-gun, and more importantly, some will Pay for a shortcut. They will need to keep making money after "release", and they need those who have more money than time to do so. They said this before, so I guess it's about time for the empty wallets of the backers to hit the fan, and realize this.
The important part will be to see how well balanced that price/time/shortcut is, and than start shouting about it if it's really unfair to those who have more time than money.
As far as I know, apart from buying ships IRL, there is only an option to buy in-game money with IRL money. No XP/stat/reward-boosters and shit like that. So I'm okay with it for the moment.
I don't like this, but with the death of the monthly-sub based system in MMO world, I'm all for it if it means they won't limit gameplay with paywalls or limit content as they do nowdays in many other "F2P" MMOs.
TLDR.: Looking at the drastic changes in past mission-rewards, I think they went with more or less random prices on those ships, and there is nothing to really worry about, yet...
I just cant agree with low prices for a ship if you can get enough for one in a few hours where is your sense of achievement. for a starter ship it really should take at least 12-16 in game hours for a fresh player or super broke. maybe an hour for someone whos been in for awhile its really about progression. without that whats the point
For me there is two scale factors one being the cost of ships and items and the second is the reward payout for activities.
@Lorddarthvik is right with it being a sim but it should be limited in how low wages are. As its the scale that matters and we shouldn't be looked at the final cost of the ships be it 2 UEC to 2 trillion UEC for an Aurora, but how much time it takes to earn an Aurora in game.
I honestly think they are doing the right thing basing the price of goods off similar goods in real life so as to get a good spread between items, guns, components and ships that is familiar enough as to feel balanced. Then once they bring online enough features they can start to scale the risk/rewards so that the avg player play time is balanced towards forward gains. In fact I am sure they are already collecting player metrics from the PU to calculate how long players are online doing missions. How long its taking them to complete the mission and then with that information they can adjust the mission rewards to meet expectations.
But as it stands we are looking at tier 0 mission givers with no reputation and then projecting how long it will take to earn an Aurora in game. Where in truth I do not expect most players to never advance past these missions and be forever a minimal wage worker. After all every gamer starts out with a spaceship so we are already in the 1%. How far you go is up to you.
@Lorddarthvik is right with it being a sim but it should be limited in how low wages are. As its the scale that matters and we shouldn't be looked at the final cost of the ships be it 2 UEC to 2 trillion UEC for an Aurora, but how much time it takes to earn an Aurora in game.
I honestly think they are doing the right thing basing the price of goods off similar goods in real life so as to get a good spread between items, guns, components and ships that is familiar enough as to feel balanced. Then once they bring online enough features they can start to scale the risk/rewards so that the avg player play time is balanced towards forward gains. In fact I am sure they are already collecting player metrics from the PU to calculate how long players are online doing missions. How long its taking them to complete the mission and then with that information they can adjust the mission rewards to meet expectations.
But as it stands we are looking at tier 0 mission givers with no reputation and then projecting how long it will take to earn an Aurora in game. Where in truth I do not expect most players to never advance past these missions and be forever a minimal wage worker. After all every gamer starts out with a spaceship so we are already in the 1%. How far you go is up to you.
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
I think it is way too early to say the prices are excessive. In the past, players were flying missions every ten minutes and earning 7k@. If you were racing or hauling oyu could make more, and macsand2 broke 1 million credits pretty quickly. So how can you say this or that is overpriced? The most you can do is compare relative costs.
If you can fly 5, 7k credit missions per hour, that's three hours to earn a starter ship. How is that too much effort? You are already starting with a starter ship. If you can trade up in a week, seems good to me. If you continually trade up and it takes a year to get a top ship for your chosen profession, isn't that what grinding through the ships should be like?
If you can fly 5, 7k credit missions per hour, that's three hours to earn a starter ship. How is that too much effort? You are already starting with a starter ship. If you can trade up in a week, seems good to me. If you continually trade up and it takes a year to get a top ship for your chosen profession, isn't that what grinding through the ships should be like?
Radegast74
Space Marshal
Or, maybe they did think about it, and they are using advanced Psy-warfare on us...this could be the "door in the face" technique (as opposed to the "foot in the door"), where they start off with a large request / large amount first, and then when they lower it later, we all cheer!
Of course, for some people, it will never be low enough.
Think about it, IRL, $500 for a pistol isn't a bad price, $1000 or $1500 for a rifle isn't a bad price. So, if you earn 4000 UEC a mission, if you did 3 a week, that would be more than most people make IRL in a month...
I just read that the price of the F-35 stealth fighter just went below $90 million for the latest batch (but the Navy & Marine Corps version still costs oven $100 million because it is equipped differently).
And i just googled, the latest Navy destroyers cost $4.4 billion each, more than twice the cost of the previous generations:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uss-zumwalt-trial_us_56f19e6ce4b03a640a6c0508
So, CIG is already scaling the prices down for us.
The starter ship prices do seem a bit high to me, but I'm presuming they will come down later...
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
Yeah, but if you factor in the R&D costs for the F-35, and add that to the cost of each fighter, it will be the first fighter in history that costs more than $1B@. If we buy few enough of them, which seems likely because they suck so bad; they could go over $2B@.
So ask yourself why we sell them overseas for less than 1/10 what they cost us, and you'll understand how the US military industrial complex has worked for 40 years. None of this used to happen back before they moved the risk to the government through cost-plus contracting. It is the great bane of our age in military and aerospace expenditures.
The most increadible part is that when LockMart sold the F-35 to DoD, it was based upon this notion of building cheap fighters to replace the $70M F-18, and they wanted single engine to keep the price down. So now we have fighters that are the most expensive in the work, and the highest defense procurement in human history, that can't compete with the best fighters form Russia and China because they have only one engine.
So ask yourself why we sell them overseas for less than 1/10 what they cost us, and you'll understand how the US military industrial complex has worked for 40 years. None of this used to happen back before they moved the risk to the government through cost-plus contracting. It is the great bane of our age in military and aerospace expenditures.
The most increadible part is that when LockMart sold the F-35 to DoD, it was based upon this notion of building cheap fighters to replace the $70M F-18, and they wanted single engine to keep the price down. So now we have fighters that are the most expensive in the work, and the highest defense procurement in human history, that can't compete with the best fighters form Russia and China because they have only one engine.
supitza
Vault Dweller
I also don't want "Commuter Citizen". They thought we'd really enjoy waiting for the train for a 5 minute commute.
Remember how fun it was in WoW, for example, when you took a flight path across the continent and you could literally go make a sandwich and write your Ph.D. thesis while you waited to get to where you actually wanted to be? I don't either.
Amen to that. If this game wants to have a large player base, and I am assuming it wants to since that's the only way they will stay afloat, it would have to concede here and there. Make it too hard and grindy and real and you risk being left with only the hardcore. And those won't be enough to financially sustain a game of this scope that will not charge a monthly subscription in my opinion. If they are going to rely on cosmetics and currency as their form of income after they stop selling ships (if they do keep to that promise which I am starting to doubt..*cough* nickel and diming a stream as if you are Blizzard or something *cough*) then they will need a larger demographic interested.
I am not saying grant everyone a Javelin for free upon first log-in, but at the same time don't price your low to mid tier ships that are solo friendly so high in an attempt to either force people to buy currency (call me cynical but I trust NO video game developer/company in todays market to have ANY shred of decency when it comes to charging their customers...) or force upon them a certain playstyle that they may not want.
I don't think starter ships are for people that want all ships. They are there to get your foot in the door. Thus they should be relatively easy to obtain. Get your interest, make you go "Hmm, so this clunker gets the job done, sort of, but what about those ships that are a bit more expensive, they look cool. I want one." If even starter ships are a bitch to get then.. People will lose interest VERY quickly, at least in my opinion. Sure the dedicated and hardcore won't mind, but your average Joe will quickly tire of being an airline hostess if he or she has to do it for 10-12 hours just to get back on a basic ship. Now, the big multi-crew ones - those do need to be in the millions. No argument from me on that front.
Yes, this game offers more than ship combat and whatnot, but for many the selling point is "Duuuuude, spaceships broooo!". If you take that away or make it a chore to get even the most basic one.. Well, it would be like Forza Horizon 4 for example, a car game, forcing you after you crash your car to walk back to the Horizon festival on foot and then the game telling you "You need to ride as a passenger for three days before you get your car back", at which point I think most people would go "Fuck this, I'm out." And I personally don't want to play on empty servers with just NPCs. I've done that in WoW... Once is enough.
Not sure where the worry about starting ships being unobtainable comes from given that each game package comes with one and a fair amount of insurance. They also said that insurance will be fairly easy to keep up as well as reduced price to recover lost ships even if ones insurance laps (it was said in regards to those who were pondering the lack of LTI on purchased ships).
It will be interesting to see the balance grow over the next two years as they bring online more of the game features. I have a feeling there will end up being so much to do (mostly due to player created content) that while some will bitch about not being able to own a Javelin after several months of casual play for the most part both parties will have a fun time for years to come. Especially given the scope brings with it complexity and while you might not be the captain of a Javelin you can still participate in large capital ship battles. From being on the bridge or a gunner to flying a fighter or bomber, that you don't even necessarily own just provided to you for the mission as pilots are always needed. As this org is not unique in its plethora of available ships far out stripping the number of pilots.
It will be interesting to see the balance grow over the next two years as they bring online more of the game features. I have a feeling there will end up being so much to do (mostly due to player created content) that while some will bitch about not being able to own a Javelin after several months of casual play for the most part both parties will have a fun time for years to come. Especially given the scope brings with it complexity and while you might not be the captain of a Javelin you can still participate in large capital ship battles. From being on the bridge or a gunner to flying a fighter or bomber, that you don't even necessarily own just provided to you for the mission as pilots are always needed. As this org is not unique in its plethora of available ships far out stripping the number of pilots.
Radegast74
Space Marshal
ooooh, I can write another Ph.D. thesis? That's the game I want, lol!
Maybe while I'm waiting for the tram, I could pickpocket a security guard?
you always start with a starter and from what they have shown most time related items are effected by your in game time so saying 2～3 months of insurance is extremely long. even if it was only 5 in game hours if you log in once a week for 1 hours thats over a month of insurance real life for that player. point is you will always have a ship unless you do something really dumb. if you want bigger ships well earn them nothing should just be handed to you. look at eves prices for ships
This has nothing to do with SC. Small staged low rate production runs and the concept of concurrency have inflated the cost of the F35.
But that one engine creates an incredible amount of thrust. All that aircraft has to do is offer the same exact same capability of an F16/F18 in terms of range and what can be carried and it's fulfilled it's role, while adding newer better sensors and stealth. Those are some of the KPIs for the jet. Chinese and Russian jet engine technology is not brilliant in comparison and the Mig 29 and Su 30 seem to not have the greatest reliability record right now. Also the F18 price that often gets banded about does not include the $20M jet engine.
I've always understood that military jets had two engines in the past because they were not reliable or powerful enough. So it was a necessity to have two and naval aircraft were the big driver of that. The F16 and Harrier seem to have done just fine with a single power plant. The costs include the R&D and the through life costs so the TCO is being considered in the case of the F35 unlike older procurement's.
bedoinitusa
Space Marshal
I personally think the Hammerhead should be Five to Ten times or more higher than it is. Corvette is not a ship everyone should have in their personal inventory(well, not for a very long long period of time). Just thinking our enemy has alot of them, our Aurora's would be just sketters running into a bug zapper.....
Oh, don't get me wrong I agree about bigger ships. Anything above a Cutlass or a Lancer should not be cheap to get and the Lancer and Cutlass should require a relatively decent time investment.
Anyway thanks for having a civil and constructive discussion with me. I was away from the game for a while and went and got involved in some spectrum debates... That place is cancer pure and simple. The first ounce of criticism and you get branded a hater by the knights in shining armor defending CIG with their lives... It's quite pathetic to watch AND it's harmful for the game.
In fact any form of blind loyalty hurts a project more, in my opinion, than offering a bit of criticism. Even if it's erring on the side of hate. I'd rather people hate and criticize me than have them so far up my ass I feel like a puppet. But that's just me I guess... And the majority of folks on Spectrum, it seems, are so far up the ass of Chris Roberts and his employees that they get a live feed on what those people are doing.