Except it's not at all because there will be monthly limits on how many credits you can buy and rumblings that the maximum will only get you so far getting you a ship, like the idea that they'll be double or triple the price in UEC converted from USD. In other words, that $60 300i could be be 180,000 UEC, or 30 UEC above the assumed buy limit (150000 UEC, or $150). Getting it in game would be faster.
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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: Hangar Module
- Thread starter MrBig
- Start date
Except it's not at all because there will be monthly limits on how many credits you can buy and rumblings that the maximum will only get you so far getting you a ship, like the idea that they'll be double or triple the price in UEC converted from USD. In other words, that $60 300i could be be 180,000 UEC, or 30 UEC above the assumed buy limit (150000 UEC, or $150). Getting it in game would be faster.
So... I've been interested in this game for a long time but never really read much about it. I now really wanna try it. I should be good to go with the $40 pack, right? The Aurora MR+ thing.
I've read a bunch of things about the game and checked their site.. it seems like I should be fine with this. Also right now I guess all I can do is just walk around, look at my ship and that's about it?
I've read a bunch of things about the game and checked their site.. it seems like I should be fine with this. Also right now I guess all I can do is just walk around, look at my ship and that's about it?
Yeah, the 40$ pack has the best value since you get the game + alpha + beta.
That's right.
Right now you can only try out the hangar module but the dogfighting module should be released around the end of March or April.
And that's only if they've actually completed your ship model. Although I guess that isn't a problem for new buyers since the incomplete ships are no longer for sale.
Back from my skiing trip!
It also let me to wonder if we'll get some cool snowy planets, with your ship having to be fitted with special parts to be able to land and such. Like having trouble heating up the engine and difficult flyability in a blizzard. It would need to wait until atmospheric flight gets included though.
It also let me to wonder if we'll get some cool snowy planets, with your ship having to be fitted with special parts to be able to land and such. Like having trouble heating up the engine and difficult flyability in a blizzard. It would need to wait until atmospheric flight gets included though.
It's coming. 2019.
spindoctor
Member
They haven't said anything about how they will stop people from exploiting this though. There are already people who have multiple accounts who could just keep buying up to the currency limit and trading it to their main one. Or guilds with many members could start pooling up money like this.
Not really. My guess is April / May.
It's as easy as limiting it by account and cross-referencing the payment method. After a certain point, it becomes unweildy. It's also pretty easy to track how a bunch of money goes from one guy to another. Hiding this sort of activity would be difficult at a certain point and likely against the TOS.
And guilds pooling their money will have a larger percentage of funds from actual gameplay, especially the hardcore activity organizations. Besides, having the bigger ships requires crew, which practically speaking requires other players. Having the bigger more expensive ship isn't exactly an advantage, not to mention you can't buy the biggest ships, you have to earn them through exploration and gameplay. It's just not cost effective to try and pay to win.
As early as March, as late as April. Straight from the mouth of Chris himself.
Not that this will stop it but it's likely that currency transfers will be taxed in-game, even to your own alts.
The impact of currency purchasing and transfers is way up in the air at the moment. Sensible restrictions could help and I'd rather complain when we have a better idea of the game's economy.
Honestly, I'd rather have no currency purchasing at all but you have to have some kind of post-purchase revenue when you're dealing with server infrastrucure like this. It's either subscriptions, premium currency and convenience items or Star Citizen's method.
edit: How is Elite: Dangerous handling it? I'm pretty sure they're going with paid expansions. Star Citizen won't be charging for updates to the persistent universe.
CitizenVectron
Member
There's a really simply way to get around it, though. Just use the currency to buy an item, and then sell that item to someone else for $1 in game (or gift, if that's possible). Then that person can sell it for more in-game currency. They might take a small hit for it, but the majority of funds would transfer. So someone could have multiple accounts and do it that way.
spindoctor
Member
A single Paypal account can have 8 different email addresses I believe. That's 8 separate payment methods right there. People have multiple credit cards. Families will share payment methods. It's not going to be as hard as you might think to do it.
Also, paying to get an advantage doesn't only mean someone paid for a better ship with better guns. Not having to care about earning ingame money for repairs, insurance, docking fees, refueling, training etc. and instead being able to focus on better armaments or ship mods is also an advantage.
As mentioned in the post below yours, I don't think anyone will necessarily transfer money from one account to another. You could just launder it by selling extremely cheap items for exorbitant prices across accounts. The only way to stop it is to make purchased currency account bound so that it can't be used for trading purposes. Only for NPC expenses like repairs and docking fees. I feel they should take the time to design the economic system and spell it out for all users. They keep insisting it's not pay to win but tell us how they're going to achieve that.
That seems like an awful lot of time and work which you could be using to play the game, don't you think? I'm not saying it won't happen, but you can only get the best equipment in the game through actually playing, and you can only optimize it by working it out through trial and error in-game. If you want the best stuff, you have to work for it. If you want the most money, you're better off just playing the game. I'm not saying people won't waste their money in such a moronic way, just that it doesn't seem like it'd be worth the time and effort setting up such a scheme.
They don't even have the core gameplay yet.
CitizenVectron
Member
It would only take 5 minutes to load up a different account, buy some in game cash, launder it through items, send them to your other account, and log off. I think you're overestimating how hard it is to launder money in MMOs to exploit systems like this. There's no way to stop it unless they only allow real life money to be used for paying docking fees, repair costs, etc, and not on any items or ships at all. But then you'd need 2 currencies in game and that sucks. And even then, it gives those people and advantage as they need to spend less time grinding.
spindoctor
Member
You seem to be hoping that people won't exploit the system because it sounds somewhat inconvenient. I would rather hope for a system which can't be exploited in the first place. I'll reiterate at this point that there is a lot of nuance in what kind of advantages paying can provide. Suppose it takes me 10 hours of playing the game to earn 1.5 million UEC. I spend that on repairs, docking fees and other expenses and then I spend what's left for ship upgrades. Another person spends 10 hours playing the game to earn 1.5 million UEC, and then another 20 minutes buying an additional 1.5 million UEC from 10 different accounts. Which of us is going to be able to afford better upgrades?
Sure, but this pay to win thing is a pretty big sticking point in gaming these days. It seems prudent to spend some effort to quell those fears. Especially after they've made the controversial decision of letting people purchase the ingame currency. They keep insisting that it won't be pay to win so I don't think it's too much to ask for them to let us know how they're planning on ensuring that. It doesn't have to be set in stone or anything. Wouldn't it be nice to know how they plan to block this particular exploit we've been discussing on this page?
Dictator93
Member
PBR preview again today on Wingmans hangar. Check it out yo!
Yep. It'll be four months late. At least we have a rough date, though.
They also said during today's Wingman's Hangar that they're spinning up the servers this week [edit: today, actually, according to what he said during Wingman's Hangover] and CIG's various worldwide studios are going to test playing the dogfighting module against each other to see how lag is and whatnot.
And there will be a patch this week to the hangar module, but Eric Peterson didn't say what that would entail. He did say that it would be a while before we get another hangar module patch because the next one will put in physical-based rendering for all the ships, but they have to convert all the ships to PBR first (that apparently takes quite a bit of time).
And it seems that the Scythe, which has been rebuilt using PBR, won't be released until that PBR update for the hangar, although that's just me connecting the dots.
[edit] Peterson just said during his live "Wingman's Hangover" show that he's pretty sure this week's hangar patch will add Occulus Rift support. So that's neat.
Dictator93
Member
If this is just what a ship look like (the materials are crazy)... imagine what it looks like in motion...
PBR Godliness:
PBR Godliness:
April ? what a joke. Even if it's not surprising.
kutthoat5150
Member
that looks so good, hopefully this will be implemented fully when the DFM comes out
How is it a joke?
Sounds like May then. I am okay with that.
I agree that it's a very important question. But I also understand that - at least at the moment - they have other concerns. And some half-baked answer wouldn't help anyone in the end. Maybe after the release of the dogfighting module, when they have figured out more of the core gameplay mechanics and PU economy, they will start outlining the micro-transactions system.
Because that's make the delay as big as the time initially separating it from the hangar module release. For a delay officially comfirmed like few days(?) before the initial release date, I consider it a joke.
I can't wait to see how much content will be in after such a delay.
I'm assuming it will be a relatively decent game on it's own with this extreme of a wait -- rather than putting out a very basic dogfighting module it'll be fleshed out to a decent degree. So rather than me playing one or two rounds, im hoping It'll be fun enough to sink a few days into.
Well, when they debuted the hangar module at Gamescom, they released the module to backers just five days later. So if they debut the dogfighting module at PAX East on, say, April 12, I'll probably be released to backers within the next week. I would guess that Thursday, April 17.
Physical-based rendering. It's kind of like a different way of texturing models so that the textures look more like the materials they represent and making light bounce off of those materials more realistically. It ends up looking like a generational leap compared to models that don't use PBR.
It's interesting to note the content - as the delay was presented as a cancelling of the original plans and not so much the content not being ready (as ready as can be expected for this point in time at least), the experience we end up getting in April will likely be far superior to what would have gotten, and that's very good for backer confidence.
Physically Based Rendering entails using a library of shaders, materials, effects, lighting characteristics, etc to define surface rather than a traditional texturing pipeline in which each individual texture would define the characteristics of each individual asset, e.g. adding light/dark variations, ambient occlusions, false depth information to the texture itself. So for example you would have a material that defines what tungsten looks like and how it reacts to light, and then in every instance of tungsten being used throughout all of the assets of the game, the same tungsten material will be used. In the end it practically means it's just a different way of approaching the texture/material pipeline that should make everything look more compelling and cohesive.
These are my own words and I'm not an engineer, my experience is with concept art/design, so while I may get the high level concept of it I can't say how it actually works.
Dictator93
Member
PBR/Physically Based Rendering is a way of rendering materials and lighting to make them much more realistic.
Having trouble getting good gif quality though due to the dark lighting sadly:
***Removed***
Dictator93
Member
There are other issues I took with the post, such as how to long it would take to launder that sort of money and how much would be lost in the laundering process, but this is the biggest. You assume grinding, as if this is WoW or Final Fantasy. This is not what it is. We don't know the exact in-game costs of playing the game or the economic values, but we do know that Chris Roberts has said time and time again the real meat of the game should be in its gamplay, that you're to have fun while flying around and doing missions for their own sake and not necessarily for the payout.
Neither. Upgrades are balanced horizontally, not vertically. It's a skill-based game, so what matters more than how much you have to equip your ship is exactly what you equip your ship with and how you utilize it. Spending $1500 to dodge another 10 hours of play isn't going to change that. That sort of money output isn't sustainable for someone who has the time and energy to devote to keeping up with people who can play 20 hours instead of 10. And if you decide to go out and play another 10 hours, you'll have even better access to weapons and upgrades than the guy wasting his time and money laundering UEC because you improved your reputation with the corporation you're running jobs with.
And even in the very rare case of someone being able to afford both the hardcore time constraints and the cost of all that UEC, it will be very rare. Will it happen? Sure! But it's not going to happen often, because it's entirely impractical to do so. Better for you to just play the game (where you'll encounter more PVE encounters anyway) than worry about some vague boogeyman who might have bigger guns than you. I'd worry more about zerg rushers and large player orgs overpowering the systems and hoarding persistent assets. The Wallet Warriors are the least of the issue here.
spindoctor
Member
I disagree with the premise that paying to gain advantages is not a problem just because it might be a rare occurrence.
If this is just what a ship look like (the materials are crazy)... imagine what it looks like in motion...
PBR Godliness:
Oh man, those graphics....
CitizenVectron
Member
Laundering will probably incur some sort of tax or penalty in-game for transfers, but even if it's 50% (which it won't be, probably 10-20%) it will still be beneficial to do that for people who want to get ahead quick.
And being skill-based doesn't mean people with more money won't win easier. If you have 2 equal players and one has a starter aurora with a basic shield and the other has a superhornet with advanced stuff, then the superhornet guy is going to win because he spent more money. Skill will help you win, but only with the best tools. And money buys the best tools.
As for grinding, there will absolutely be grinding. No game in history has ever had hundreds of hours of original, non-repeating content to keep players 100% captivated all the time. Some things will be tedious after a while, and in order to make money players will have to deal with it. Basically, unless you can earn an Idris within an hour of booting the game up, then it means you'll have to work your way there, which means repetitive tasks and money-making missions or trading, etc. This game is going to be fun, but it's not going to be jesus in digital form. It's okay to acknowledge its flaws, and being able to bring in real-world money to skip having to grind is one of them, unless you're one of the people who wants to do that (Chris Roberts himself is behind the idea, and supports it).
Are we really freaking out yet over the game's economy while they haven't even finished a combat module? I'm sure they will come up with something decent, and if it that gets abused, they can always change the rules to make it more fair.
And if you still don't like it, nothing stops you from setting up your own server and play without all those pay2winners.
And if you still don't like it, nothing stops you from setting up your own server and play without all those pay2winners.
Paying for some sort on in-game content is an advantage only when it's an unbalancing element. If enough people blow a few thousand dollars amassing paid-for UEC and causes a clear unbalance, CIG is going to notice. Since that kind of laundering would likely be against the TOS, it makes sense that it would be easy to ban for. I don't see this becoming a problem, but if it does, then it can be taken care of relatively simply.
Well then you sir haven't played XCOM. Certainly there will be mission types repeated, assets repeated, ground retread, but that's not "grinding". Grinding is the repetition of a simple task to build towards a desired outcome. Star Citizen's complex interaction mechanics make it much easier for CIG to vary it up. I'm not going to claim I know how Chris Roberts will solve it, but if you look at such an example as XCOM, you can't play that game braindead or you'll get your shit pushed in. Even if you're only running a mission to get one of your recruits up to squaddie, or to get some materials for weapons, you still have to calculate every move. Even with a limited number of assets, procedural variety in the encounters and the particular fog-of-war mechanics makes each encounter uniquely challenging. Each mission you take in Star Citzen will similarly be different and generated based on the need of the economy. You'll have to chart new courses, cross new systems, make new acquaintances, encounter new enemies. It's not Final Fantasy where you can just mash that A button to victory, or WoW where the interaction mechanics are embarrassingly simplistic and rigid.
The purpose of giving people the option to buy UEC is to provide those without as much time to play to gain a similar sense of progression and be able to keep up with the in-game happenings. Imagine only having a few hours a week to put into the game, and yet every week there's a new ship or a new star system or a new event happening. The idea behind that is to provide a sense of progression with the rest of the game instead of being left behind due to a lack of time to invest. Again, will it be abused? Sure, but a skilled Aurora pilot will be able to take down a souped up Super Hornet no problem. Their guns penetrate shields just as well as the Hornet's does after all.
It's be interesting to see how they solve the Scythe's non-human cockpit conundrum. The latest Jump Point has some testing sketches/models in it, but they all look super awkward. Even a Vanduul piloting it looks ... too much, somehow.
I certainly appreciate that they're going for something different and are trying to match that awesome early concept art.
I certainly appreciate that they're going for something different and are trying to match that awesome early concept art.
CitizenVectron
Member
Except that they won't. You think that there won't be multiple levels of shields and weapons? If there isn't, then what would be the point of earning money in the game, if not to upgrade your ship? And you're ignoring the point again that if the two pilot's skills are equal, the better ship will win. And having more money = better ship and weapons, and allowing people to use real cash to get that money means they'll have more money.
I think you're also overestimating how easy it will be for them to stop money laundering and other exploits. Look how long WoW has been around and how easy it is to get gold using real life cash. Game makers can never stop that sort of thing, and having it built right into the game makes it even easier to exploit.
aY227
Member
Skill is never the same and ship modules, and ship systems do not work like levels in RPG games. They have pros and cons, they can make You faster, but weaker, or stronger and slower etc.
Your whole theory is just a theory, it wont work that way in practice. In real scenario, there is never equality, there is playtime advantage, position advantage, framerate advantage, skill advantage, module advantage, group adventage and even luck advantage.
You can easily use EVE Online as an example here, because You can buy leveled characters, ships and even officer grade modules and You still wont win if You dont know what You are doing, or You will be outsmarted by setting up good trap or someone will have good counter modules against You.
In skill based game that do not have expotencial scaling on items [exactly like EVE or Star Citizen] You cant buy power.
Buying modules or ships will only save time, nothing more, nothing less, so if You think thats unfair, go and limit playtime for players too, because those who play more also has 'unfair' advantage over You by Your definition.
If You dont like competetive aspect of sandbox MMOs, You can always play 3 different SC modes, PVE only flag for safe sectors in persistent universe, SP campaign or on MP moddable servers.
I don't want to get involved in this particular economics discussion (too much conjecture), but I'd suggest posting in the ask a dev threads and wingmans hangar question threads to encourage them to speak more about their intentions, expectations, and designs. As a reminder, this is the biggest individual info drop about the economics of the game so far, which you should be referencing.
And while the economics system is indeed very important, it is the player interactions that will actually make it matter in the game, which means it hinges on the mechanics of the instancing system, which they have also been rather vague on.
And while the economics system is indeed very important, it is the player interactions that will actually make it matter in the game, which means it hinges on the mechanics of the instancing system, which they have also been rather vague on.
spindoctor
Member
It's very idealistic thinking to believe that one person will spend the time playing the game and honing his skills while the other one who paid money will be absolutely clueless and have no idea how to do anything. Odds are the person who is buying money will have played just as much as you and will know the game equally as well and then will be able to buy an advantage.
And all the factors you mentioned (skill, positioning, framerate) are only going to dilute the objective advantage that having more money can provide. Unless there is no advantage at all to having more credits, in which case no one in the game will ever try to earn more than necessary to fulfill the bare necessities, but I don't see that happening. So yea, lots of factors can determine the outcome of a confrontation but I would strongly prefer that being able to pay money to gain an advantage did not play any part in it, not matter how small you might think it will be.
Shrike Alvaron
Member
I think what looks awkward about that picture is it looks like the pilot has to hold themself up by their own power. In the latest updates there's this picture that shows the pilot actually does have a cushioned seat to lay on, with all the controls adjustable to fit different body types which should solve any awkward stretching:
Honestly it actually looks like a comfy way to pilot!
aY227
Member
Its Your theory that is based solely on basis that module X is way stronger than module Y and it has no drawbacks. Which wont be a case in this game, like its not the case in EVE Online.
And i say it again, its only a theory that odds are even or even close to even in realistic scenario. In realistic setting, which is proven by almost decade of EVE Online existence, You cant buy power in such a game.
And again, You want also limit player time? Because people who play more earn more money? Maybe block their squadron too, because two vs one is unfair?
Fights are never fair in such games, but thats not because of money.