The Star Citizen Thread v8
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Harbinger
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There's certainly people who buy games who never play them when they're on sale and I'm sure ED is no different in that regard however the number of players live at any one time doesn't really tell the whole story. IIRC the numbers were hovering around the 8% level for unique players over a 2 week period, that's still in excess of 100K players on Steam.
But this was never about Elite Dangerous' performance, merely about setting an upper limit to what could potentially be expected if Star Citizen ever reached gold status, which let's face it will never happen. It's going to stagnate in Alpha indefinitely.
Srry...but...I have right to express my opinion also I have right to criticize SC and yes I have right to complain If I wanted that.....and you my friend have ALL the right on this WORLD to skip reading my posts if you finding them annoying or to downvotes my videos if you didn´t like them at all........just pls. STOP telling me what YOU want me to do from now on....because one thing's for sure that ain't going to happen......
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Nobody is attacking your personally here, only your absurd reasoning for holding on to a starter package while complaining about how its value is degrading through inflation.
Let's be honest:
How much did you spend on Star Citizen in 2018?
In 2017?
In 2016?
There are people out there, who spend thousands over thousands for the "working with game developers" experience. They get the special treatment for that and even if everything turns out bonkers, they still might think, that their "meal with Chris Roberts" was worth it. However you didn't, yet you believe you are entitled to a "front-seat in the circus" for one-time fee of 60 euros, while in CIG's view your ARPU is zero.
That's where your confusion comes from.
Would there be anyone wanting to invest in this?
I'd be surprised if there weren't.
All else aside, it would simply be another high risk-(potentially) high reward scenario for investors.
So, the basic questions are 1: How much does CR need or want? 2: What is he offering in return? 3: What are the pros and cons, risks and rewards, liabilities and perks that are involved?
I seem to recall there was a mention of such activity in the HMRC documentation (IIRC).
As I recall, CIG paid about $3 million for the IP rights to SC.
I don't think I'd put it that high. Two million accounts, but less than half spent any money on the game, and of the rest, CIGs own incentive program is something that encourages multiple accounts. I'd say there are typically much fewer than 500,000 players.
Look at how many views SC vids get on Youtube for example. 2 million subs but how many views? And that is important because, for a game like SC, it isn't only individual copies which are important, but how many people are in the game with you. When you design a game to be an MMO, it makes a difference as to whether there are 200 people in game, or 200,000.
As for market saturation....SC is a niche game in a niche market. Worse, it's a niche game in a niche market that is rapidly becoming a joke. Worse, development of the game...such as it is...appears to be slowing and the game years away from release.
Technically - if what CIGs own devs state about the engine is true, then I can understand fully why development is slowing. I would expect it to get worse. From what I hear, both privately and publicly, the engine is a mess. So - years away from release probably means another 6 or 7, with another 10 not impossible, unless CIG start cutting content.
Because right now, CIG probably have mined out the whales, the causals, the "just looking in" and the "risk takers" for whom $60 isn't a big investment. The "Wait and See"-ers? They'll "invest" and buy the game only if the game is good. If it is fun. If it works.
And right now....it isn't. And in 6 or 7 years....it'll be even less so.
We can always hope that CIG have "finished building their toolkit" and that "development is going to accelerate" as a result.....but being honest, CIG have been spinning that for the last 3 years and they still don't look anywhere close to accelerating development or even creating content.
Further, those 1 million freefly accounts? Those are the people interested enough to actually sign up and try the game out. The rest of the gaming community couldn't even be bothered.
CIG has sold a million accounts, give or take. Given the type of game it is, that is big success right there. And if CIG hadn't apparently wasted the money, they'd be well placed to continue development and expand the game.
But expectations that this game is going to be the type of game that will see CoD style numbers? That is never going to happen. CIG will do well simply to persuade the million who have free accounts to pony up.
One of the problems with showcasing Early Access and pre release access is that you blow your shot at a really big launch party. Star Citizen...even now...is yesterdays news. And the technical and legal difficulties CIG are experiencing are such that there seems little likelihood that the game will ever be "finished". The most that seems likely is a rush to add some basic mechanics, flesh out a system or two followed by an "early access release".
Strangely enough, CIG seems intent on adding some (very, extremely) basic game mechanics right now and have promised us a massive 5-10 systems soon(TM). Not that we should be reading anything into that.
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*cough cough*minimum viable product*cough cough*
COD: Infinite Warfare is the closest released counterpart to SQ42, and it has sold around 125,000 physical copies (guesstimate based on the previous COD's physical PC version sales), and around 500,000 Steam copies. Star Wars Galaxies has apparently sold over a million copies a decade ago.
Edit: I'm not sure, but I think even the physical copies of COD: IW need the Steam Activation, so both physical and Steam sales numbers shouldn't be added.
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I'm not sure what type of number you guys are trying to get at.
If you look at the recent poll for 3.2 features there were 27,650 votes. So there are that many engaged people right now with SC.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/16468-Alpha-32-Feature-Survey
In general, there is not a fee to melt your 315p and then buy an Avenger. You might have some special circumstance that I'm not aware of though. And the Avenger is getting reworked for 3.2
Is you 315p on your game package or a standalone ship?
And the ships aren't balance really at all, so they could change again.
Out of 2 million accounts.
A little bit over 1.4% of the imaginary number of unique backers.
Obv we know the 2 mill figure is a complete fantasy - but even if it was accurate are those considered good numbers for the best game ever after 6 years in developemnt?
I’ve not seen this done recently, but if you add up the play time of everyone in the SC leaderboards and divide it by the amount of tine since the leaderboards were created, you get the (mean) average number of concurrent players. This average can be less than 100.
RE COD:IW, Statistica has global sales of around 12 million, including all platforms. Taking the game to space made it sell less than half of the copies of the previous year’s COD. Having said that, COD:WWII sold slightly less than IW last year, so maybe people are finally getting bored of COD
Nah, I think it's more of an indication that people don't like space games, which doesn't make much for SC backer's hopes of storming the market with some incredible sales figure.
I think world war 2 did not take place in space...
Haven't you seen Iron Sky?
I didnt complain I just pointed out of possible CIG manipulation and how they degrade the ship I own,who knows it could be the case with other ships to or I could be also wrong maybe they just"tweaking"the ships-stats to make the better game play....You asked me why I didn´t refund and I answer you....seems to me that my answer didn´t pass your usual STANDARDS and make some sort of "malfunction" in your brain and you become"hostile"towards me or just maybe you get"angry"because I left my money to your "ENEMY"and his family so automatically I become the ENEMY 2.....anyway I am going to STOP now and refuse to go further into this useless debate with you....I wish you all the best.....
Then I could be wrong...I was under impression that CIG invented(later on) some sort of the melting-fee or something to prevent the people from changing their ships more often....Well yeah back in the end of 2013 I get the game package with the ship included,originally it was the Avenger but as I said I melted it after few days and get myself 315P.....In general, there is not a fee to melt your 315p and then buy an Avenger. You might have some special circumstance that I'm not aware of though. And the Avenger is getting reworked for 3.2
Is you 315p on your game package or a standalone ship?
And the ships aren't balance really at all, so they could change again.
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Maybe if a space game was to be build around a battle royale mode...
I was too young to consciously have an overview of the video/computer game market, when space games where more common. There's been certainly a revival going by the amount of new space games, but just as certainly, these games have occupied a niche, while other games and genres have stormed the charts. That much one can probably safely say without doing a whole study on the subject. It's the Mobas, the Battle Royal modes, the building (Minecraft) games that have found the widest audience in recent years.
And the triple AAA open world games, specifically GTA. In theory, Star Citizen would serve that kind of market, but without a full release that actually reaches the quality of these AAA games, it's probably impossible to say whether or not a "AAA" space game has the potential to sell well today. Elite, being limited to pilots glued to their ships and offering at its core very simple, grindy activities with little to no authored content but a whole lot of 2nd life baggage certainly doesn't reach the market. It remains to be seen if something like the rumored Starfield from Bethesda turns out to be a "AAA" open world space game. If it is and releases in a timely manner, it might just eat Star Citizen's lunch.
Not least because it'll be sold for 60$, maybe 100$ with DLCs and people might get a pretty much complete product, rather than perpetual promises of the BDSSE being just another 200$ ship concept sale away... And also, because I'd suspect a Bethesda game would refrain from going full 2nd life with bowel movements and endless, needless cinematic tedium.
Another thing that mass market games do well to avoid: You need half an hour to meet up and play with a friend? You're out of the running.
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