just a quick sidenote in case you didn’t knew: Including walking on planets has been discussed at length at some point, and I:B Dev (Brebion himself iirc) has stated during that discussion, that they don’t plan to incorporate human walk-arounds / ground vehicles, because (again iirc) they wanted to focus on the ship vs ship fights for their game.
They’ve also said, that it could be possibly incorporated via mod.
on the note of SC’s LTI mechanic: To me it sounds like a terrible pay2win mechanic. Not only are you literally buying power in the form of ships, but you can also make it so that you cannot lose them.
There was a similar mechanic in the now defunct Dust 514, so let’s recap some of their mechanics:
If you died in Dust514 (a fps for those who didn’t knew), you permanently lost all your equipment that you had … equipped.
Better equipment cost more money to buy (for example, if a low tier sniper rifle would set you back 200 credits per unit, a high tier one would set you back 20k credits per unit)
Finishing a round would reward you with credits, giving more if you won, but still a sizeable amount either way (by the way, a good way to prevent people from rage-quitting a lost fight - you only got the money if you finished the round)
There was a base level of equipment that was free, so that you could gain money by playing the game, even if you were basically bankrupt (it was f2p btw).
Cost-management was an integral part of the gameplay. Better equipment would make surviving more likely, but if you died twice in your ‘best loadout’, you could end up making huge losses regardless of your performance (Can’t remember the exact prices)
Vehicles were usually really strong, but could be taken out by comparatively cheap anti-vehicle equipment.
Every equipment had a certain skill level requirement for you to fulfill, before you could equip it
Those requirements were learned over time using skillbooks that could cost quite a bit of money (between 500 credits for low tier and 5 million credits for high tier skillbooks iirc)
Your loadout was highly customizable (identical to the equipment system used in Eve Online)
now enter the premium stuff;
Using premium currency, you could buy equipment that performed like high-tier equipment, but had low-tier requirements.
this was intentioned to be a pay 2 skip option for those who had jobs and couldn’t play the game for hours every day to level up those skill books
Dying in y premium equip would also make you lose what you equipped
It was fairly cheap to buy (in the price range of 10-30 cents per loadout)
Then there were permanents:
These wwould cost you between 5 (for weapons) and 99 bucks (for vehicles bundles) up-front
This was equipment that was around mid-tier (iirc)
If you got killed using that equipment, you wouldn’t lose said equipment
If you bought permanents, unless you were playing endcontent, you would run mostly permanent builds. They got rid of the risk management and allowed you to perform better than the average player (unless your aiming sucked balls *coughs*). After a short time, you had a lot of money saved up. This allowed you to participate in endgame content battles, where you could take over planets, while f2p players were stuck in a loop of barely making profit in a fight, slowly buying slightly more advanced skill books etc.
In short: Removing the part of the gameplay that is designed as a credit sink (for your normal insurances in SC’s case) can lead to a huge gap, as those who paid for LTI can make more money (by losing less), and therefore progress much faster.
LTI is only on the base hull though. Everything else on your ship can be lost. So unless insurance is given a high cost (which it wont) then LTI doesn’t guarantee more “progress” than regular ships.
The main question to be answered is how people who pay for in game currency will perform vs those who earn money in game. Those who want to pay will be able to get things quicker but AFAIK those items can be lost the same as items earned via game income.
you can pay your insurance in game and reading the FAQ it will be accessible. Everything in Star Citizen is available with aUEC so it’s more a “pay to get it faster” model
That’s what I was aiming at. You pay real money to progress faster in the game, which then gives you an advantage over those who did not pay into the LTI. There was a clear distinction between those who paid irl money for permanents in Dust514 and those who didn’t after just a short amount of time, with those who paid regularly dominating the battlefield.
Even if it is ‘just’ the base hull, those savings will rack up (they did in Dust514).
Eve let you buy currency as well but it was from other players/through sub time rather than through the game company itself. On one hand, the game doesnt have sub time and wouldn’t have a natural market price, but it does mean CIG can set the real price of UEC higher than they would be able to otherwise. Really depends on how you view buying currencies in MMO games, i quite dislike it but almost every decent sandbox game i’ve played has had it in some form, legitimately or otherwise.
Ok I understand your point, but it’s like playing more than others, it gives you an advantage (some people have more time to spend in-game than others). And because you can pay LTI for every ship (and every mod on your ship) with aUEC, for me it’s not really relevant, and it doesn’t bother me… I precise that I never did and I am never going to pay with real money to buy things in a game, in SC or in any other game that would propose it.
Buying Isk doesn’t buy common sense though. I found that those who spent more time buying isk than playing the game soon found their wealth redistributed to those who understood it while also providing content in the form of flying loot pinatas. Eve is perhaps the only game where I found their system of buying in game currency to work. It definitely had its flaws but I don’t think it hurt the game. I took advantage of it because I was able to play with multiple accounts for free. I thought that it was a really cool system and saved me 40$ per month.
I know that’s not really what you were responding to and that’s just my opinion. I don’t really have one about SC since I nothing vested with the title. I’m standing by and watching the show.
I agree with your take on the EVE system, people would buy isk then not know how to properly use it. And eve is a game with lock on based MMO combat with little mechanical skill required, there are plenty of guides everywhere even.
For that reason im hoping SC ends up in a similar situation, where people get UEC and then waste them if they never really play the game enough to get good at it. That said, there are a number of good players in eve who buy currency, and the same is true everywhere. They just aren’t the majority by my guess.
It all depends on how fast you’re able to throw people back into a fight. In Eve-Online it can take an age to get re-fit and back into the fray without an awful lot of preparation beforehand due to the nature of the game’s player economy and reasonably long travel times.
If LTI means you instantly have your ship back in a combat-ready state, a hop or two away from the combat zone with no prep-time required, things might look very different. CIG need to be careful with that one.
Some have compared insurance in Elite: Dangerous to SC LTI, or insurance in general.
In Elite its simple. When your ship is destroyed you have the option to start with a small default ship for free, or your original ship and the option to include all ship components you added as well. This is automatic BUT you have to have the cash to afford the buy back.
LTI seems fairly self explanatory but what about the regular form? Is it like Elite where you only pay out when you are destroyed or is it more like real life where you continue to pay out even if shit doesn’t happen?
I’m not so much interested in how it is right now, although the comparison would be interesting, but what the long term plans for it are once they go retail.
I wonder also if they will continue to allow the public to hand over real money for ships when they hit retail, because what I have read states you don’t have to buy them but it helps fund development. Well once development has hit 1.0 what are you funding then? Will they still allow people to throw thousands to buy pixels?
If CIG’s past statements are any indication, a single system will take around 45 mins to traverse. The star map shows jump points located on the edges of the systems so there would be at least 30 mins of travel. Then there is also the equipment loss and time to wait for replacement of the larger ships and equipment.
Insurance will be continuous UEC payments AFAIK.
As for ships CIG have stated many times that they will not sell ships in the current format past a certain point (I think it was when the economy is up and running) so they better stick to their word on that. I’ll be pissed if they don’t.
CIG talked about shipwrecks to be recovered and repaired for super-capital ships. They’ll be open PvP zones groups will need to take and hold to have access to them in combat.
Some ‘possible’ new info from TheAgent. Believe it, don’t believe it. Your choice.
TheAgent posted: hello expect to see some “in game” cutscenes soon fps is still unplayable due to massive lag and other issues right now the team does not want star marine in 2.6, Roberts does new pusher scene coming soon (YouTube standalone trailer) majority of the team has no idea things are bad financially mostly young hires at this point INN drama “hardly noticed” at CIG lol going to start heavy sq42 focus and ads
_expect to see a ridiculous list of single player features that are no where close to implemented _ “SCII like” in how chapters and content are released “A beta? A real beta [for Star Citizen]? 2020 at the earliest. My prediction? We ship something so far off the mark, every job we get is overshadowed by having RSI on our resumes.” “Our character tech looks great, as long as the player and the NPC are completely still. The second something moves on screen, things look terrible. We’re fixing the same problems the last two years and nothing is improving. No, things are, things are getting better. The glacial pace of improvement is what’s going to sink us.”
You’re not improving the quality of this thread, you know ?
Seriously. Look at your last post. Some possible news reported from a member of frontiers’ forum called “1500” reporting something said by another guy called “The Agent” without any sources, and you now here to report it…
This is a thread dedicated to Star Citizen, not dedicated to DS Blogpost, neither a direct mirror of Frontier’s topic about Star Citizen.
You make impossible for others to discuss about game mechanics, or about real news given by CIG… the five last posts are yours… you’re killing the topic. Please don’t kill this topic.
Honestly I don’t see anybody interested in discussing the games mechanics into detail right now, it has been done in depth before in this thread.
Nobody is stopping you from starting a meaningful discussion, if you have something interesting to say regarding star citizen please entertain us.
I found the last Redhed posts rather entertaining, especially the one about ‘theAgent’.
Truth be told, I don’t visit the SC forum or subreddit anymore, a discussion without repercussions is not possible there. I would hate to have this happening here. So instead of ordering someone to be quit, you could supply these eloquent thoughts that start real meaningful discourse you so desire.