(...) As well as macro-pre-purchases with a P2W lean, driven by MLM, 'gamified' upgrades, and in-game disadvantages. Which is what is mocked on a more casual and daily basis across the internet.
I'll expand a bit on the P2W thing for Star Citizen. While it's heavily P2W indeed to a certain point (i'd say mid-tier ships) after that the costs of running bigger ships, and more importantly upgrading them to non-sucking tier are huge and not available with any kind of starter money (yes, even buying those P2W credits, you'd need a few exponential factors more..). Out of the box, ships in SC are the equivalent of brand new ships in ED: lowest tier everything, usually with a craptastic quantum drive too (with very few exceptions). A mid-size ship like the MSR cost about 1 million UEC to upgrade to A-tier, that amount of money needs quite a bit of playing to get. Bigger ships are way more expensive, and Idris owners for example who get their shiny new frigate out of the dock will get disillusioned really quickly. So yeah it can be P2W at that tier if you got an org with same minded people who will all dump their money into starter credits and donate to the Idris owner, and then go serve as turret gunners and whatnot on said frigate. Otherwise that Idris will just be target practice.
Sorry but after $350M and almost 10 years i'd expect the core game engine (graphics, physics, networking) to be there. It's not. "Alpha" or not, this is unacceptable.
