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I have not been following star citizen at all, but since I started playing Elite Dangerous and loving it, I was thinking about SC. I've no plans to get into it now, but have they/anyone said anything about how the game will be priced and sold when it is a finished thing (if that ever happens)? Will ships still be up to hundreds of dollars each?

Hi, I don't think that the ships will be on sale when the game is finished... they will all be available through gameplay though. I would guess that the retail price would be ~$40-60. The base package is $40, and it might be worth getting it before the game releases in case the price goes up on launch; however, launch is probably 18 months away so no hurry!

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Thanks for creating an Idle Thumbs org! I've been following Star Citizen sort of fanatically and it seems as if having good people to play with will have a big effect on the overall experience.

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Eurogamer posted a look at the grey market for Star Citizen ships this week. I found some of the quotes from Chris Roberts on the value of virtual spaceships interesting:

 

"Is it any different than when you go to Comic-Con and you buy your special character models or vehicle models?" he continues. "There are quite a few people who are now at the point where the model is detailed enough that they like the digital version of it, because they don't have the shelf space. Some people like that sort of digital collecting."

 

"Things are changing," says Roberts. "The traditional feeling is, you want a physical thing, and then that's got value. But the ships we build, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a ship at that level of detail and put it in there. Is that different than hundreds of thousands of dollars spent manufacturing those old plastic models? I don't know. Some people, they do see some value on the digital side in a way, old-school thinking about it, you wouldn't."

...

"Some people just like the idea of looking in their hanger, their space garage, and looking at their collection of ships," Roberts says. "There's a sense of pride. The same way if a rich person buys a bunch of sports cars. They can't really drive every one of their Ferraris or Porches. Jay Leno has got warehouses full of cars, right? He's got so many cars he could drive a different car every day of the year and go three or four years and not drive the same car. How useful is that, really? He just likes to collect them. If people collect comics, most people don't read those comics they're collecting. They just have this huge comic collection."

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Its an interesting argument but the cars and comics hold or increase in value due to their rarity while the digital ships presumably can't be sold for real world profit.  I also would think most people purchasing the ships are looking for in game advantages rather than enjoying having a full space garage.

 

Anyone play any Starpoint Gemini 2?  I'd never heard of the first game but this one has been relatively enjoyable for the half dozen hours or so I've put into it.

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A big part of that article is about the real-world profits folks are making off of selling ships. I don't think it's sustainable and it doesn't make any sense to me, but I was able to offload my kickstarter pledge at roughly triple what I paid for it.

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Its an interesting argument but the cars and comics hold or increase in value due to their rarity while the digital ships presumably can't be sold for real world profit.  I also would think most people purchasing the ships are looking for in game advantages rather than enjoying having a full space garage.

 

Anyone play any Starpoint Gemini 2?  I'd never heard of the first game but this one has been relatively enjoyable for the half dozen hours or so I've put into it.

 

....it would be comically naive to assume that some don't want some kind of initial advantage in the PU. but, I would wager most aren't looking for an advantage...most really are just "collecting space cars" for their garage. 

 

People are excited, at this point, the only way to "play" Star Citizen is purchasing ships.....you can't fly your ship necessarily, (some you can in AC) so the warm glow of after purchase wears off pretty quick....since you can't get that glow again in the game, they have to resort to another purchase....The feeling of investment and partial ownership in and with the game are what people are chasing....

 

 

As pkirkner says, he sold his early backer stuff for more...meaning that the "worth" of the ships not available for purchase from CiG now, have in fact, increased in perceived value...

 

 

lots of real world "worth" is just an agreed upon imaginary thing anyway....even gold etc, its only worth something because EVERYONE agrees its worth something....if someone values something, that's all it takes for it to be worth what they will pay...LTI is the big draw, you've no reason to buy a ship on the grey market if it doesn't have LTI (disregarding whether LTI will be handy or not) its something that will not be acquirable in game, thus, is made inherently "rare" ....someone decides they want a ship that isn't offered with LTI anymore, and they are willing to pay to acquire that, then the worth of the ship just increased from when it was purchased from CiG....

 

 

 

 

I patched Arena Commander last night (finished last night, geez it takes forever), Got the Hotas setup working (again),  as best I could with the buggy keybindings....Now that Track IR is supported, the gimballed guns follow your head tracking, which is pretty sweet....now just gotta get Voice attack to work and I'll be able to control shields, power levels, target acquisition etc etc with voice commands to the AI ship computer....one guy has done some coding with it to make "ANNA" ....watching videos she seems my cup of tea for a ship computer....

 

 

 

 

I just gotta say, with the Hotas and the ability to LOOK at a target and make that target a flaming wreck, its pretty cool, being able to then say " Full power to shields, all counter measures, target 2, lock missiles....full power to weapons, dampeners off, PIN next target...." on top of that, idk...its just pretty neat....hands free space combat management is something I can dig pretty hard....

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Eurogamer posted a look at the grey market for Star Citizen ships this week. I found some of the quotes from Chris Roberts on the value of virtual spaceships interesting:

 

I meant to post my response before the discussion moved on, but I'm really uncomfortable with the consumption model of a video game being patterned after the practices of the super-rich, however implicitly. The vast majority of car and comic owners don't collect for the sake of collecting with no intention to actually use their collections, and I don't really know what the endpoint of a game with those assumptions is.

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Scarcity is what gives collectors items value and I'm not sure how compatible that is with the promise they've made from the start that all of these ships that are selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars now can be had for free by playing the game upon release. I don't envy the sort of tightrope walk they'll have to perform to satisfy both the most financially-invested portion of the player base that has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on ships and the much larger portion of the player base that backed for a more modest sum and have been promised from day one that the final release won't be pay-to-win.

 

edit: As far as the consumption model being patterned after the super-rich, I just visited their website and saw that the latest ship on sale is literally a luxury space yacht that will set you back $600.

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Cloud Imperium Games live-streamed an event from Los Angeles last night celebrating the second anniversary of the crowd-funding campaign, and announced quite a bit. Some highlights:

  • All ships currently in the alpha can be played by all users with alpha access from now until the 17th and there are plans for similar temporary ship unlocks for testing purposes in the future.
  • The Drake Cutlass got its full release, complete with
     and brochure.
  • The planetside environments got their first live demo, which I thought was quite impressive. I've embedded that portion of the livestream below.

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I'm feeling quite a bit more positive towards Star Citizen now; I have always supported it and hoped that it would be good, but I have been severely disappointed by the Arena Commander module that they put out. Thanks to the limited time access to all ships this week, I got to try out things other than the cruddy Aurora :P! Racing the M50 around one of the more challenging tracks was the closest thing I've had to fun with AC, but definitely not worth buyng the ship package for. Also, I upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 970 this week from a 660, meaning that I could get a much better idea of what it was supposed to look like. 

 

I've seen highlights from the Citizencon livestream, and some of that stuff looks promising too. However, I wonder if thexity hubs will be more than just 3d walk-in menus. I mainly pledged for the story mode, Squadron 42, so it was good to see a bit of news about that.. I don't see even the faintest glimmer of the best damn space sim ever, but it looks like it could be a good game; it's guaranteed to be interesting! 

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That video was actually kind of disappointing to me... complete autopilot landing. It seems very low stakes. 

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They stated from the very beginning that landing on planet would be automated, but not necessarily a cut scene...They also stated however, that manual landing on planets would possibly be a thing after release....read into that what you will...

 

 

 

I'm feeling quite a bit more positive towards Star Citizen now; I have always supported it and hoped that it would be good, but I have been severely disappointed by the Arena Commander module that they put out. Thanks to the limited time access to all ships this week, I got to try out things other than the cruddy Aurora :P! Racing the M50 around one of the more challenging tracks was the closest thing I've had to fun with AC, but definitely not worth buyng the ship package for. Also, I upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 970 this week from a 660, meaning that I could get a much better idea of what it was supposed to look like. 

 

I've seen highlights from the Citizencon livestream, and some of that stuff looks promising too. However, I wonder if thexity hubs will be more than just 3d walk-in menus. I mainly pledged for the story mode, Squadron 42, so it was good to see a bit of news about that.. I don't see even the faintest glimmer of the best damn space sim ever, but it looks like it could be a good game; it's guaranteed to be interesting! 

 

 

Neat, all this week? what ships and what modes? would like to take some of the other ships out for a spin ....

 

 

 

 

Scarcity is what gives collectors items value and I'm not sure how compatible that is with the promise they've made from the start that all of these ships that are selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars now can be had for free by playing the game upon release. I don't envy the sort of tightrope walk they'll have to perform to satisfy both the most financially-invested portion of the player base that has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on ships and the much larger portion of the player base that backed for a more modest sum and have been promised from day one that the final release won't be pay-to-win.

 

edit: As far as the consumption model being patterned after the super-rich, I just visited their website and saw that the latest ship on sale is literally a luxury space yacht that will set you back $600.

 

 

well, they have always stated that you aren't buying a ship, your pledging to fund a game and that all ships will be available in the PU....now, recently, it has felt more like just selling ships and not necessarily funding a project (having $52+ million doesn't help that view)...

 

 

That said, seeing as the line they've used is "....your funding the game with your pledge, the ship is a thank you" I don't see any tight rope walking that will be required...The only bit that will be tricky will be LTI, making that "not a big deal" but definitely "nice to have" ...seeing as LTI was originally for Original backers as another thank you for pledging early and they have always stated that "...LTI is not a big deal" I don't see how any complaints by big spendors later will hold any water, don't get me wrong, their will be endless bitching, but...its the internet, so really, are we surprised....

 

 

On the other hand, they are now selling ships for limited times with LTI, since most early backers now won't buy a ship without LTI (meaningless or no) 

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Neat, all this week? what ships and what modes? would like to take some of the other ships out for a spin ....

 

All 5 ships that are in the current version of Arena Commander are available to everybody: Hornet, 300i, 350R, M50, and Aurora. I think that's the list anyway, not paid too much attention! You an use them in all of the available modes. You'll probably have to download patches for 1 or more hours though, depending on when you last logged in... when I went from version 0.8 to 0.9, it took over 10 hours to download and apply the 20+ GB of patches! 

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Video about the developers making the FPS module:

 

 

I was totally taken by surprise to find the creative director wearing my forum's t-shirt. :tup: :tup:

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To celebrate the two-year anniversary of the end of their initial crowd-funding campaign, the developer has put a bunch of fake internet spaceships back on sale for a week. In addition, they're selling 5,000 copies of the final game for $20 on the 28th of the month. That's $10 less than the early-bird kickstarter tier, so it's likely the best pre-order price we'll see.

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Tomorrow the 5,000 $20 starter ship/game packages go on sale. If you're at all interested in the game now is a great time to join up! And if you do, don't forget to join the Idle Thumbs orginazation!

I have a good number of ships I'll be donating to this org. Whatever you're interested in flying, from tiny little fighters to huge multicrew military behemoths will be available to take a spin in. All while having fun with Idle Thumbs folk! Think about that! Then act on it. :)

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New commercial! Testing out their character animation tech, apparently!

 

 

And just before the holidays they pushed out Arena Commander 1.0, whatever 1.0 means in the context of a project like this. It adds a pretty nifty ship signature system. Details on it found in this pretty lengthy release notes thing.

 

The short 'n sweet of it is that all ship's signatures are based on 3 major things: Electromagnetic radiation, determined by a ships electric systems; Infrared radiation, determined by a ship's heat output; and cross section, which is based on the actual volume of the ship.

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They also cut a new trailer, which is mostly made up of footage they've previously released.

 

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The Arena Commander module is buggy as all hell. I've not once been able to do anything- literally. I launch it, and I'm met with an atrociously low-rez screen saying I cannot log in(so I guess it can't duplicate my login? why are developers so averse to error messages ugh), and an OK button I can't interact with because I have neither mouse or controller control. So I've gotta hard-kill the program.

 

I understand this is early software, but that's why you don't call things 1.0 for a reason. Don't treat your versioning system like a damn marketing opportunity.

 

Edit: Specifically, don't treat a versioning system implying "release ready" as a marketing opportunity. I could care less about alpha/beta, because no one has a reasonable expectation there(software is developed at all sorts of paces). But everyone agrees on what 1.0 is.

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Yeah, I'm really not sure why they decided on calling this 1.0. It's still limited to folks who pledged for alpha access and like you said is really buggy.

 

I've not once been able to do anything- literally. I launch it, and I'm met with an atrociously low-rez screen saying I cannot log in(so I guess it can't duplicate my login? why are developers so averse to error messages ugh), and an OK button I can't interact with because I have neither mouse or controller control. So I've gotta hard-kill the program.

 

Deleting the "LoginData.json" file in client folder fixed this for me.

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