It's this bit "a Constellation costing significantly more in in-game credits than it does now if you are pledging and stuff." that bothers me.
Before he had said ~60 hours to earn a Constellation, so just under 3 weeks at 3 hours per night.
If it is now significantly more, lets assume that means 3x more, we're now at 2 months with 3 hours per night, every night, and the Constellation is not a big ship, not much larger than the Cobra Mk3 if I remember correctly.
Why would you want to add this sort of disparity to the game right at the beginning? Why would you want to price low(ish) tier ships so far away from newcomers to the game. It's the sort of decision F2P designers make, put it right on the border of what is acceptable so that people get fed up and think about using the cash shop to avoid the grind.
Let's compare this to a game that I think has the best "milk the money from players" mechanisms of them all...the World of Warships.
Some of you may have played it, some may not, but I'll try to explain how it works so everyone understands.
You pick your nation of interest for the beginning.
Let's say you pick the Japanese.
All nations have 4 different classes of vessels, from smaller to bigger: destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers.
Japan has (arguably) the strongest battleship in game - the Yamato.
I've got it, but it was a long and painful process accompanied with a lot of (real world money) cost.
Why will I compare getting a Yamato to getting a Constellation? Because they both have price tags and they can both be earned without spending the real world money.
The trick with WoWS is, if you go that route, it's gonna cost you - time. If you wanna speed up that process then it's gonna cost you - money and time.
So to keep things simple...
Base price for the Constellation is $280.
WoWS in-game money is called "Doubloons" and for
$280 you can get
75.000 doubloons.
WoWS in-game currency is called "Credits". You can convert doubloons into credits to buy stuff.
But, you can't just go and buy the Yamato with converted credits, because you need to have two additional in-game "currencies" called "XP" (experience) and "Free XP".
You earn XP exclusively by playing and in no other way.
Base price for the Yamato is 20.600.000 credits and 959.600 Free XP
There's an important difference between the XP and Free XP, but it would over-complicate the situation if I were to explain it to someone who never played WoWS.
If you were completely dry on credits and XP (which is impossible because all ships during battles create credits and XP, so you'll always have some) - therefore this is the worst case scenario that never happens - the Yamato would cost you:
1 doubloon = 1500 in-game credits
1 XP + 1/25 doubloon = 1 Free XP
Therefore you need:
13.733 doubloons for in-game credits
959.600 XP and 38.384 doubloons to get 959.600 Free XP with which you can research it.
TOTAL: 52.117 doubloons and indeterminable amount of time to gather XPs (varies from person to person, how much you play, how well, etc.) which you convert to Free XP for doubloons.
In conclusion:
52.117 doubloons cost
$195.
Therefore, the Yamato costs less real money than the Constellation, but takes a lot of time to gather enough XPs.
I sometimes used doubloons to skip grinding certain ships and even with that, it took me well over 3-4 months to get to Yamato.
Some of my friends who I play with, didn't want to spend money and are still grinding for Yamato. I bet it's been half a year they're working on it (not intensively, though).
So, if CIG decides to use similar money/grind ratio, I reckon you'd need at least 5-6 months to get to Constellation just by playing.
I know the comparison may by completely off and invalid, but there you go.
