I know what you are saying, I disagree.
I don't believe star citizen's whales are all poverty stricken people who won the lottery or the wastrel sons of the idle rich. The majority of star citizen backers even those with fleets are average Joe's, a higher percentage than average who claim to be auditors, game dev's or both, but average Joe's nonetheless.
The edge case's you use as an explanation don't normalize it or explain it, they are edge cases. It's still absolutely bonkers (and doomed).
The problem with this is that it assumes the backers pay much more than the startup costs.
Star Citizen only needs a few thousand whales to pay up on a regular basis to get its fees paid off.
In other words, those edge cases could be enough. Out of two million backers...assume only 500k paid for a package. That is $30 million right there. Assume only 100k paid anything more...that is each paid $1500 extra over 5 years.
$30 million a year means 25k backers have to put aside an average of just $100 a month
A few edge cases of whales paying thousands on ship packages because...to them... $15k is chump change, can seriously reduce those numbers even more.
I think paying money for these ships is dumb, crazy and stupid. BUT....if I really wanted to, I could afford it. I spent £300 buying a game I can't play simply because I really wanted the "privilege" of owning it and because I thought it worthwhile. I paid £150 for a board game that is out of print because I want to complete my collection.
These are dumb purchases....but they're worthwhile because they make ME happy.
That doesn't excuse CIGs sales tactics or current lack of delivery or anyone who spends non disposable income on the game.
I can get that people can and do spend such money on SC. Its the people who spend money they can't afford because of CIGs predatory sales tactics I feel for.
Right now, 3.1 is out....
on the very last day possible to meet the Q1 promise, despite shifting major aspects to 3.2.
That screams "ran out of time anyway" to me...that CIG were working up till the last minute to get this working.
We don't know if their optimisations worked. I've heard mixed reviews but my general impression is that it is better than 3.0 but still bad and still generally unplayable.
CIG probably need to at least double the speed they have now and do so consistently before we can say their optimizations work.
