this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Never play Star Citizen, even if it somehow becomes playable. Got it.
The game costs $45, for the record. For an MMO. With no subscription fees.
WOW costs $155 per year.
Yeah, this is what I keep telling people but nobody wants to listen.
Once the snowball effect has taken hold, it's next to impossible to reverse.
I fully expect us to see SC detractors to vanish into thin air like those who voted for George Bush Jr. once the game launches and everyone is playing it.
It's fucking Stockholm syndrome with you people and that game. I tried it for a few weeks. You constantly run into huge game breaking bugs that, when you google it, people say 'yeah its been like that for years here is the 20 minute work around'.
There. I got that argument from you out of the way. Games aren't in alpha for over a decade and rake in half a billion dollars and not manage to crank out a working product. Thats not how this works. There are 2 options. Its a scam or they are morons.
This game could be the second coming of Jesus, Robin Williams, and Mr. Rogers all in one and it still wouldn't excuse the shit the devs have pulled. This isn't a case where its reputation will be fixed with an amazing final product. The moment you charge thousands of dollars for fictional video game ships in an unfinished video game that has been in development for more than a decade is the moment you cross a moral event horizon as developers and can never recover your reputation as anything other than leeches. This game will never have a good reputation, it could jerk you off to the tune of the Imperial March and it would still be worth less than a glamorous prostitute. At least a prostitute would charge more appropriately for their services.
WoW works.
GW2 is free and FFXIV is also free up to storm blood or shadowbringers expansion. How much content is there in Star citizen again?
I don't like WoW, but that's at least an actual game. SC is still nothing but a glorified tech demo. And I say that as one of the earliest backers.
Yes, it is nothing but a glorified tech demo right now. You're absolutely correct.
That $45 price (or whatever you choose to spend on the game) is a pre-order.
If you don't like owning incomplete products, don't buy incomplete products. This seems pretty simple.
That's all cool and dandy but they blew several release dates over the past decade already and can't even get their second system out while waiting for that glorified network tech and magical performance increases.
That's a incorrect comparison. You're treating WoW and Star Citizen to be similar games. When WoW for more than a decade has been in its own premium bucket.
The average MMO today is free. Then the small percentages of MMOs that require the core game purchased.
No MMO is free. The question is just how you're paying.
Servers cost money no matter what.
iRacing easy costs $200-$300/year + paid tracks + paid cars
$45 plus a rig that can play it, I have a decent one and it nearly melted
If it's $45, how are people spending $10,000 on it?
Same way people spend thousands on games that are "free to play". What kind of a rock have you been living under? People routinely spend $10,000 on mobile games.
Yes, you can buy spaceships for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You can also buy those same ships using money earned in game. This is not the first or last game to do this, and it's really weird how every time a pointless article gets written about it for cheap clicks, a bunch of people suddenly want to pretend that they're only just just encountering this phenomenon for the first time.
Free to play games with even a sliver of integrity only charge money for stuff like cosmetics, not for important shit or equipment, and I have never ever seen a free to play game charge over 1k for anything ever, let alone fucking 48k, so spare me the "pretending this is unusual" crap. I sure other games that pull this shit exist, but don't act like it isn't ridiculous or fucked up or like it's somehow completely normal. It's predatory leeching is what it is.
Please learn the difference between "Stupidly expensive" and "Predatory."
Lamborghinis aren't predatory. They're a dumb purchase for rich people to blow their money on, but they've got the money to blow.
Now Lotto Max? Those little one dollar tickets? That's predatory.
The most blatantly exploitative free to play games are often full of dirt cheap purchases. A dollar here, a dollar there, because when the numbers are small you lose track.
When SC charges you $200 for a ship that you could just unlock by playing the game, that purchase is an informed decision. You know up front exactly what you're getting, and exactly what it will cost. There's no loot boxes, no random rolls, no gambling. Just a simple transaction.
Whether or not the person on the receiving end of that transaction is getting a good deal is for them to decide. We could just as easily argue over whether or not spending $250 to go to a fancy restaurant is a good deal; it's largely down your personal preferences.
Bro just because something is expensive that doesn't mean it can't be predatory. The game has been "in development" for more than a decade and yet is charging thousands of dollars for equipment, if you can't see the issue with how they're operating then you are either blind or delusional.
To be fair, WoW is an actual complete game, while SC is very, very unfinished. And I say this as someone who occasionally plays it and gets some enjoyment out of it.
Apparently it costs up to 48k to get certain ships, so that means absolutely fucking nothing.
You can buy them in game. honestly i dont know why these people even want to buy all these ships with real money, a big part of these games is working your way up and upgrading your ship or buying new better ones. These people are paying to remove that part of the game which blows my mind
The fact that you can buy any ship in the game with real world money at all is the problem.
Yeah for people who actually enjoy putting the work in it doesn't make much sense, but for some people who play video games it's not about the getting it's about the having. The problem is that in this case they can use real world money to have better stuff without having to work for it, giving them an advantage over other players who are poor or don't want to pay for their ships. If this was 48k for just ship skins and it didn't affect gameplay at all then it'd be pretty stupid still, but I would at least concede that the average person doesn't have any disadvantages if they only pay the 45$ for the main game and don't need to pay thousands of dollars to reasonably compete with players who have bigger wallets and less impulse control. But that doesn't seem to be the case here since different ships have different stats and abilities afaik. This essentially means that rich people (or gambling addicts which are their own can of worms) can unlock more of the game and perform better faster than people who only pay for the base game.
It costs 48k for every ship in the game. The most expensive single ship that I've seen was about 1.2k.
1.2k ... for some bits and bytes.
I know professional software licenses that are cheaper.
Dude that's like a month of any Autodesk software! :O
And yes it's utterly ridiculous, and I just wanted to take a shot at Autodesk because screw them lol.
No ship should cost any real world money to buy. If the stuff you can buy in a game with real world money can give you an advantage over other players or unlock parts of the game faster than players who don't pay real money for it, then it's meaningless to say the game itself is "only 45$". The ships make up a huge chunk of the game and you can pay 48k to obtain them all immediately, or rather, not you because statistically speaking you're probably poor, so you don't get the same game for 45 dollars, not unless you want to spend a fucking loooooooooooooong time grinding in-game (based on what I've seen the time needed to grind for enough money to buy even one high class ship is ridiculous). Meanwhile richer players get to fly in circles around you in their better more expensive ships from the start. You get access to less of the game than them.
Also, 1.2k for a single video game spaceship in a game that hasn't even been officially released yet is disgustingly predatory enough on its own.