Things could be a lot worst.

[lilikin]

Firstly, let me pre brace for impact and tell everyone that I am heavily invested in Star Citizen in case some of those white knights are on the way over already to nuke this thread into dust..

Firstly let me set a few rules for discussion, lets talk realities in this thread

Second lets not Bash any other game, lets just state the current fact's as I bet most of us in reality want it to be a good game

Now onto my point:

When I look at Elite as an investment I look at what I invested into the game.

Money (game and accessories), Non play time (forum checking, seeing if I wanted to invest in the game), emotions (excitement, expectation etc etc)

I then investigated what I got back from that, probably a couple of hundred hours of fun game play and probably another fifty of not really that great but I wanted to do it for when the features actually came I wanted. I paid about £0.16 per hour of fun and thats actually a good investment.

Bottom line money wise if the servers turned off tomorrow I have had my money out of it.

Time is par for the course with most games.

Emotions mainly in excitement I think is where most people feel ripped off. Their expectations (including mine) was high and the game just didn't have the features to foster the kind of long term play people expected and they were upset.

I looked at the number of steam players online (I know its not the whole community but a good slice of it at least) and it was around 4000 at a peak US & UK time

When I look at other games thought ED is a bit of a shining star let me mention two

1. Evolve

I hot dropped £70 on this game with all the extra sexy and I looked at the community numbers on steam the other day and there was less than 800 online at a peak time (This game had a massive release and should have done a lot better), I paid about £3.50 an hour for the enjoyment of this game. (I woz robbed)

Emotions wise though I had little excitement so I feel far less robbed on this game than Elite when in reality the opposite is true.

2. Star Citizen

I have spent £250 on this game already and played a lot less than elite or Evolve my emotional excitement was high but is slowly getting crushed with some of the totally amateur mistakes the teams are making with this game. The more I read the more I am convinced they will run out of money frankly as they have very little clear guidance on their way ahead and with constant changes. I am unsure frankly that this game will ever provide me with the gameplay Elite did.

I suppose what I am really saying is don't be that guy on steam with 600 hours invested and a bad attitude towards the game as it didn't turn out to be the game you thought it was and maybe start to accept that at 600 hours you probably got your moneys worth.

 

[Klab]

Some good points. Also worth considering, even if you are totally fed up with Elite right now ( I am not) , you can always stop playing for a few weeks/months & come back to a potentially better game. What's not to like?

 

[killminster]

Why do people insist on looking at gaming as an "investment"?

Sure on the surface you pay money and get a return, i.e entertainment, but it's not something that increases the value of the initial stake which is the accurate definition of "investment".

If you're looking for increased value of something when you play games you're always going to be disappointed. Surely gaming is a hobby, leisure, entertainment. These thing have always been stuff you spend your cash on for a finite reward, not growth of your initial expenditure.

 

[Brimstone]

It could be much worse, our developers could be Cryptic.

 

[lilikin]

Why do people insist on looking at gaming as an "investment"?

Sure on the surface you pay money and get a return, i.e entertainment, but it's not something that increases the value of the initial stake which is the accurate definition of "investment".

If you're looking for increased value of something when you play games you're always going to be disappointed. Surely gaming is a hobby, leisure, entertainment. These thing have always been stuff you spend your cash on for a finite reward, not growth of your initial expenditure.

these sorts of games are an investment, to get hundreds of hours from a £40 investment I do feel like it has grown, that's the point

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

Being not as bad as it could be, doesn't make something good or even mediocre. You're right it could be worse, a lot worse, but it also could be better.

I don't think elite is bad, but I can also see that there's definitely room for improvement here too.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

Lol, its a computer game. How do you get to be invested in any computer game? It's sole purpose is entertainment, nothing more. I agree, it's entertaining for what it is, also largely due to the fact that there is currently no competition. Once that arrives then I'm afraid Elite will be chasing dustballs.

 

[Muzz UK]

I actually believe Star Citizen is going to fail because even though it will have a flying, fps and many other features,,,, I feel these will all be poorly done, rushed or not polished. I know theres an article and story about them dropping the FPS for now, which I'm not surprised about. All the videos I've seen just lead me to believe the FPS aspect is just reskinned COD or free to play shooter.

Chris Roberts made an epic series in Wing Commander but has he really done much else? I hope it doesn't fail but I just feel there's too much for them to do and get right! I almost believe 1gb patches are going alienate a lot of players and do we really have the technology to run a game on that sheer scale properly?

As for Elite I feel the game is moving and doing well but the broken bugs on each release annoy me and I wish we had more coop and PvE stuff to do not just PvP. There needs to be more life and stuff going on in this game.... still lets see what happens this year !

You are right it could be a lot worse and for the beta backer fee I paid I am not disappointed more impatient and wanting all the stuff now like walking around, planet landings and all those extra features and tweaks!

 

[killminster]

these sorts of games are an investment, to get hundreds of hours from a £40 investment I do feel like it has grown, that's the point

Fair enough, sorry for starting an argument over semantics.

I call that good value for money rather than investment, but I guess that's just me.

To explain my point more clearly though what I should have said was, nobody ever buys a book (antique Gutenberg bibles etc aside) and considers it an investment, nobody ever goes to the cinema, theatre or a gig and considers it an investment, nobody goes to a football match and considers it an investment. These are all just means of using disposable income for the purposes of fun and entertainment. You get value for money (and time spent I suppose) or you don't. Computer games are the only type of entertainment where I see people talking about it in terms of investment and I just think its a strange misuse of the term that may lead people to expecting more than they should for the money spent on it.

 

[Balfuset790]

Why do people insist on looking at gaming as an "investment"?

Sure on the surface you pay money and get a return, i.e entertainment, but it's not something that increases the value of the initial stake which is the accurate definition of "investment".

If you're looking for increased value of something when you play games you're always going to be disappointed. Surely gaming is a hobby, leisure, entertainment. These thing have always been stuff you spend your cash on for a finite reward, not growth of your initial expenditure.

Maybe I'm just weird, but 'price per use/hour' is how I look at a lot of the things I buy. I tend to be more willing to drop £100 on a pair of shoes that will last me for years and hundreds of wears as opposed to £5 on a pair of shoes that lasts me a few weeks. Equally, is it not fair to say that dropping £40 for a game that provides even just 100 hours of entertainment is better than dropping, say, £40 on a game that provides maybe 12 hours of entertainment? In each case you've spent the same amount but your value for money, you 'return on investment' if you will, is much higher from the hundred hour game than the twelve hour game.

It's why I'm picky with the films I go to see in the cinema. Mad Max Fury Road was definitely worth the money I paid for the ~2 hours of entertainment. Terminstor Genisys probably would not be, hence why I won't be going to see it.

 

[lilikin]

I actually believe Star Citizen is going to fail because even though it will have a flying, fps and many other features,,,, I feel these will all be poorly done, rushed or not polished. I know theres an article and story about them dropping the FPS for now, which I'm not surprised about. All the videos I've seen just lead me to believe the FPS aspect is just reskinned COD or free to play shooter.

Chris Roberts made an epic series in Wing Commander but has he really done much else? I hope it doesn't fail but I just feel there's too much for them to do and get right! I almost believe 1gb patches are going alienate a lot of players and do we really have the technology to run a game on that sheer scale properly?

As for Elite I feel the game is moving and doing well but the broken bugs on each release annoy me and I wish we had more coop and PvE stuff to do not just PvP. There needs to be more life and stuff going on in this game.... still lets see what happens this year !

You are right it could be a lot worse and for the beta backer fee I paid I am not disappointed more impatient and wanting all the stuff now like walking around, planet landings and all those extra features and tweaks!

They haven't dropped it they just don't know when its going to be ready, they just found out that they can't use the default code for an MMO over a standard MP FPS

Very amateurish

 

[Rauminen]

Lol, its a computer game. How do you get to be invested in any computer game? It's sole purpose is entertainment, nothing more. I agree, it's entertaining for what it is, also largely due to the fact that there is currently no competition. Once that arrives then I'm afraid Elite will be chasing dustballs.

Well, I'm sure you understand what he means, but if you want to split hairs on phrasing, then call it blind purchase.
You don't actually know for sure how many "hours of fun" a game will give you for the price, so 1/£/hr(fun) is a nice metric.

The X series score really high for me by this metric, as well as the elder scrolls and fallout games. Elite is in the same category.

That is the competition (eg. Fallout 4, even Witcher), not necessarily all space sims. And a bunch of these games are already out, so I'd wager that Elite will have an active player base for long time to come.

 

[HeimdallofHavn]

Extremely good post and repped.

I am also more heavily invested in Star Citizen and I hope it will be great.

If it gives me as many fun hours as Elite has given me, it would have been a splendid success in my eyes.

The Elite community here on the forums comes off as extremly entitled and at times puerile.

Cheers.

 

[Manuelman]

Well, tbh, I like the state of the game so far. We have lots of features and things to do, and, since it has been said in the development plan, first part is to get the basics right, then expand on it. The combat simulation is solid (believe you me, much better than SC) and the basics of what I thought the game was gonna be are there. There are things to be polished, but they are being worked on (example, DC, which is golden right now). So I think Braven and his team are doing things right. Getting a solid game, one that does what does well, then moves one to another feature.

As for the bugs... were you around when stations started phasing out while you were docked/docking, causing your ship to crash and burn for no reason? Good times, good times.

 

[Enride]

Ive been eager to see Star Citizen take shape, hoping it will be as great as initially envisioned (who wouldnt!?).
But everything ive seen, read and tried so far have been disappointing.

And since the developers are clear about designing the game mainly for mouse/keyboard (ensuring that joystick users will be at a disadvantage) ive become completely indifferent to SC and am in no way even remotely interested in it anymore.
Im a bit sad about it, especially since im not all to happy with ED either, but at least ED isnt a twitch arena shooter in space.

Oh well, Rogue system is slowely taking shape and there are a few other interesting projects being developed so hopefully there is a reason still to finish the simpit...

 

[streki]

Bottom line money wise if the servers turned off tomorrow I have had my money out of it.

Exactly this.

I feel ripped off if I get less than 1 hour's entertainment for £1 invested - I think this is a very conservative estimate of worth when you consider that renting a 2 hour movie on blinkbox etc will cost £3.50 (and thats for an SD version).

This means that ED owes me 125 hours of gameplay, and I've already had ten times that, so money well spent.

Although I'm currently pretty bored in ED (after 1000+ hours), I know that development continues, and new stuff is on the way.

Win.

The more I read the more I am convinced they will run out of money frankly as they have very little clear guidance on their way ahead and with constant changes..

I need to see a stable release version before SC get any of my money. Where FD broke up the development into bite-sized chunks (1. in cockpit, 2. planetary landings, 3. walking about), SC attempts to do it all in one hit, plus the dozens of stretch goals that they've committed to.

I feel like they've bitten off more than they can chew, and I need to see what they come up with before investing. They could well have a shambolic mess on their hands for years yet.

 

[killminster]

Well, I'm sure you understand what he means, but if you want to split hairs on phrasing, then call it blind purchase.
You don't actually know for sure how many "hours of fun" a game will give you for the price, so 1/£/hr(fun) is a nice metric.

The X series score really high for me by this metric, as well as the elder scrolls and fallout games. Elite is in the same category.

That is the competition (eg. Fallout 4, even Witcher), not necessarily all space sims. And a bunch of these games are already out, so I'd wager that Elite will have an active player base for long time to come.

Maybe I'm just weird, but 'price per use/hour' is how I look at a lot of the things I buy. I tend to be more willing to drop £100 on a pair of shoes that will last me for years and hundreds of wears as opposed to £5 on a pair of shoes that lasts me a few weeks. Equally, is it not fair to say that dropping £40 for a game that provides even just 100 hours of entertainment is better than dropping, say, £40 on a game that provides maybe 12 hours of entertainment? In each case you've spent the same amount but your value for money, you 'return on investment' if you will, is much higher from the hundred hour game than the twelve hour game.

No, maybe I'm just weird for wanting people to not use a misleading term.

We are all talking about value for money here, your more expensive shoes that last longer and the amount of time a game will keep you hooked and entertained.

But by the time those shoes have worn out and you eventually tire of that computer game, they aren't gonna be worth more than when you bought them.

 

[WiseDuck]

I actually believe Star Citizen is going to fail because even though it will have a flying, fps and many other features,,,, I feel these will all be poorly done, rushed or not polished. I know theres an article and story about them dropping the FPS for now, which I'm not surprised about. All the videos I've seen just lead me to believe the FPS aspect is just reskinned COD or free to play shooter.

Chris Roberts made an epic series in Wing Commander but has he really done much else? I hope it doesn't fail but I just feel there's too much for them to do and get right! I almost believe 1gb patches are going alienate a lot of players and do we really have the technology to run a game on that sheer scale properly?

As for Elite I feel the game is moving and doing well but the broken bugs on each release annoy me and I wish we had more coop and PvE stuff to do not just PvP. There needs to be more life and stuff going on in this game.... still lets see what happens this year !

You are right it could be a lot worse and for the beta backer fee I paid I am not disappointed more impatient and wanting all the stuff now like walking around, planet landings and all those extra features and tweaks!

Wow, your so wrong you made my toes curl.

 

[persephonius]

It could be much worse, our developers could be Cryptic.

I generally like seeing your comments on threads like this, they are usually quite positive against the flow of whining.

.

This one is a bit different

- - - Updated - - -

Wow, your so wrong you made my toes curl.

It was that exciting?

 

[barcode]

Wow, your so wrong you made my toes curl.

I've been following Star Citizen's development with interest for quite some time and he seems pretty much spot-on to me.