No, that is simply untrue: You get 168hrs, as clarified by CR himself a few days ago, and I quote:
"One thing that wasn't clear from the Friday post was that REC time is not real life time - its based on daily play. A week in REC is not necessarily a week in real life as the 7 days don't need to be concurrent. If you log in over 7 days over a month that would be the same as logging in for 7 consecutive days. The example in Calix's design overview of needing about 7 hours to "earn" a Hornet for a week was on the rational that playing 1 hour a day for 7 days would earn you a Hornet to fly for 7 days. Seems a pretty fair trade off - especially for a ship that others have contributed $110 for the right to fly the same ship in the PU and AC."
That last sentence you just wrote really exemplifies what is wrong with the current AC structure. Why does it matter that somebody paid $110 for the hornet ether individual ship or game package compared to somebody who came in at $35-45 with a basic aurora/mustang? The SHIPS in the packages are just reward for people who have more disposable income to donate to CIG for the development. Are you telling me people are paying for ships to have an advantage in AC and that only those people who paid for them should have them and those who did not should be forced to grind it out or purchase the ship? ;-)....
The bottom line is it does not matter how much you gave to CIG, I gave them a lot, I have constellation, SH, hornet, avenger, Delta etc. I gave them these funds because I really like space games and have played plenty of CR's past games. The ships are just rewards for backing the game. I had more than what I just named but hey I got rid of it once I saw that CIG started to go down the monetizing rabbit hole and now the freemium hole.
The point I am making to you is that once you BUY into the development be it a $45 package or a $700 package, it should not matter how much you gave. Once you've given CIG the money, you are a backer and should be given everything to test the game. In this case CIG promised the community once they introduced the VD store that they will have "Test UEC" or an easy way for people to earn credits so that they can purchase ship/equipment in AC for testing, this was way back in 2013 at the $17 million level, because the community back then had a huge concern about cash shops and pay2win once the VD store was introduced. Hell, even CR himself addressed this issue in the Chairman letter for $17 million.
The point of us being here once we back the game is to test it, give CIG feedback, yet CIG has hidden everything behind pay walls, every single piece of equipment is behind a real money pay wall, all of this has been going on since AC came out past 8 months. The facts are the only way to test any other ship or equipment is to buy it with real money. Who in their right mind would monetize the Alpha stage of a game? To hide everything behind massive real money pay walls when people already paid for the game and its development. The answer is, nobody does it and if they did there would be a massive storm but for some reason 50% of the active community seems to think that this is ok.
The REC is a good idea and it was promised to the community, but its current proposed implementation is nothing but a freemium implementation that a plethora of other games already have. It's a massive grind that only caters to those who have the ability to play a huge amount of hours and force those who do not to purchase with real money.
The bottom line I am trying to make here with my massive walls of texts is simple. If CIG really wanted its users to test the game, promote an even greater number of backers to play Arena Commander than current numbers they would never introduce a REC system in its current form. The only reason they seem to have introduced it was to step away form the "pay2win" that has been going on for the past 8 months. But instead, they jumped down the freemium rabbit hole, which in itself forces people to still buy stuff for real money. We have all who are playing Arena Commander already backed CIG, paid for the game and the development, why in the hell is it "OK" for CIG to further charge people real money to test the game and mechanics. If anything, if they allowed a REC system in which the unlocks are permanent, the time sink in earning credits was severely reduced, people would actually play Arena Commander more, they would have a perfect chance to test out all the different ships that are available and if anything, that testing would make people buy even more ships.
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