I don't even really care about the P2W implications, of which there are plenty, but I think my main issue with selling land (and I don't care how they word it to try and make it seem less noxious) is how far away they are from implementing any of the systems required to support the game play that they're monetising right now. They might have the slowest ship pipeline conceivable but at least they've produced some ships, so when they sell concept jpegs there's evidence that they're capable of getting them into the game, even if it takes years. But the FAQ for the land claims talks about all sorts of nonsense like prospecting, core samples, seismography, "commercial production facilities", protecting your land with drones and/or mercenaries, defense contracts, wildlife refuges, modular outpost construction and diseases. None of that exists in any form, not even close, and all of it raises even more questions about how all those systems will work and interconnect with all the other systems which have yet to be locked down. And to see how CIG's own people have been dancing around the definitions and details, I don't believe for a second that anyone at the company has any answers.
If I was guessing (and I am), I'd say this is a real hail mary cash grab that they hope will keep the production running long enough for them to squeeze out a Squadron 42 MVP (since that doesn't require any of the land ownership mechanics). Roberts probably still believes that it will be so amazing that it will earn the company hundreds of millions of additional dollars and tide them over for the next 5-10 years. Good luck with that.
I actually think you're on the money there.
It's like I was saying earlier; even if they literally did nothing from now on but work on content announced before yesterday (so basically the full mission generation system for all kind of missions/career paths, the full galaxy as originally promised (100 planets was it, or 100 systems? I forget) plus all the concept ships themselves
except the colonisation ship and all of the gameplay loops and mechanics that would be needed to fully implement the gameplay that some of those ships are supposedly designed for, so for example a full prospecting and mining system, significant content to be discovered and interacted with for exploration-focused players etc, I don't know anybody on the healthy side of a lobotomy who thinks that would take them less than four years.
That's based on progress so far and the fact that what
has been created so far is nowhere near to a commercial release standard. For a start, if they can't get the game running at better than 10fps on an i7 with a 1070 and 32GB of RAM
now they might as well pack up and go home because the final game is going to have to have
way more content than 3.0 and you just can't pitch what is supposed to be a mass market product at a 1080 as minimum entry for reasonable performance.
Then we factor in your first paragraph. Seriously, that is a whole game in itself before we even worry about trying to plug it into the other two whole games that we're five years into with very little to show for it.
You can read their comment that:
These land claims are being made available for pledging to help fund Star Citizen’s development. Pledging for these claim licenses now allows us to include deeper features in the Star Citizen game.
in one of two ways but to be honest, if I was a backer with money in this game for five years already I can't say that either one would be particularly appealing.
One is basically
'Chris has been dreaming on the toilet again and yeah, yeah you know how it goes. Now we have another three years worth of work to add to the four years we were already looking at, plus the time we need to rework all this stuff that you're playing today because it will be seven years old by then, plus we need to reshoot the FMV but Gary Oldman looks like Gandalf now. We can't even release a basic game and add this stuff in later when it works because you paid us $100 bucks for 64 km2 of pretend land seven years ago.'
The other is
'Yeah it's like this. The thick end of that $160m is already gone so if you want to play the game you already bought, you're going to have to come up with the cash to keep a AAA game studio with offices in four countries running for four years minimum. That's a lot of money son. Oh sure, we'll chip in a bit with the money from S42. Bahahahaha noob, only joking. S42 is still nowhere near playable and I got fiiiiiiiive kids to feed, so you'd better memorise your credit card number.'
If any of the SC shills have a third option to suggest I'm not even interested. There is no third option, it's just another bit of classic SC theorycrafting you're doing. In particular, there is no third option where Chris socks it to the entire gaming world by proving them wrong before jumping into a convertible with Sandi and cruising off into the sunset.
I did a quick google earlier and the tone of much of the reporting on this hovers between sarcasm and incredulity. The comments are universally hilarious too and although obviously the true believers are as strident as usual, there's no way that you could categorise the overall impression as being a positive one. It probably doesn't help that their genius head of marketing didn't realise that there is such an obvious (and lazy/incorrect but since when did that matter) comparison to be drawn to the recent EA lootboxgate kerfuffle and this that regardless of any other concerns, doing this
now was insanity. That in itself makes me wonder if anything deeper lies behind it.
You have to love the way they keep working the pump though. ParpCon was how long ago? So we get the $800 ship sale but not even an indication that this might be coming. Give everybody a month, let them get paid again, Christmas coming up and it's the anniversary sale (the fact that it's an event marking how long it's been since this began is such a beautiful touch) and BAM!
'Sorry Johnny, Santa said you've been bad this last month so the PS4 ain't happening this year but it's OK, I just bought a piece of pretend land the size of Nebraska. Oh stop crying you little snowflake...'