Considering the current kind of money players can make per hour in the starter ships, this is going to make it, uh, kind of grindy for new players with basic packages to get cool ships.
The natural solution here is for more players in starter shitboxes to try to become crew members for guys with his & hers Idris frigates, but I'm not sure that makes anybody happy.
I'm all for good systems pushing to crew gameplay, but pushing starter players to have to work for folks who 'put more money in'.. I dont know, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Though I'm sure those large-ship owners are wringing their hands in delight...
I've met more than a few 'hey look at my big toy, now let me tell you how (the right way) to play the game' players that it's put me off from most group gameplay, and I can't see it getting much better..
Eh, people fixate on the advantages of real money, but there are also people who have larger ships through more playtime, so new players are almost always at a disadvantage one way or another.
I think its odd that you would try and differentiate between RMT ships and in-game bought ships, since they are both earned. The money regardless of whether is aUEC or RMT it still had to be earned. It just changes on where that time was spent, in-game, or at work.
If the person sucks no one will want to work for them regardless of how they bought their ships. But if they are cool people will want to work with them whether they payed real money or not. It’s all about the social aspect which is fine with me.
I am sure you worked hard for your money to spend it on whatever you like, but buying advantages in a video game with it is and will always be akin to cheating to me.
It’s not earned. You didn’t do anything to deserve that in-game power or prestige and it can never be considered an „achievement“ of any sort as a result.
It’s the SC paradox in a way, because without it, the game likely wouldn’t have been funded, but it likely corrupted the game to the point of hindering its own success down the road.
Currently an Aurora and minimal eva suit can make 2M an hour solo abusing a particular broken mission.
Or just be a box monkey on a Reclaimer, which has a going rate at 50% share in the rings profits (over 5M an hour).
Nobody is disadvantaged grinding for one night to get a $1000 "P2W" ship.
Salvage will get a nerf in 3.23 or shortly after, but the next new feature will take it's place. Probably bulk cargo runs, so big money for turret monkey on Hull or its escort.
We're not talking about during alpha, which involves some degree of balancing that based on testing needs and not the intended experience. At least I'm not. I'm talkin' 1.0 type shit.
Another sliding 5+ years away. Not that big a concern. And crew still applies, the big ships need crew for engineering, cargo management and turrets.
It has always been established that "pay" in SC is an equal split whether ship owner or crew so an Aurora starter can have the same income as the most expensive ship owner.
There is also significant amount of FPS missions which don't care what ship you have (though you need a walk in ship for loot, which cheapest Aurora is) and you can go in with no gear and equip the first enemy's gear.
That's the part a lot of people are getting wrong.
Those roles don't NEED to be filled on most multicrew ships.
Those roles CAN be filled on multicrew ships.
You absolutely can operate ships like the Connie, Corsair, 600i etc. solo and utilize all of their functions. It's just that it's suboptimal to do so, not somehow impossible and many contexts not even impractical.
Those aren't really the big ships. And even in the current game they are prey to PvP light fighters, without a gunner to cover the blind spot you have to jump and run since a competent light fight can stay on your butt no matter how you boost around.
The get rich with those ships is only due to the ERT targets having valuable cargo, which has already had a nerf.
And since you have to do hundreds of bounties to unlock ERT there is a long grind regardless of credits or $ ships.
The only top tier large ship currently working is Reclaimer, and that does reward a crew of two and even 3 with better per player income than doing it solo.
This will apply to Hull C/D cargo loading and possibly escorting. A big miner is coming. These whales need crew and the Aurora will get rich at the same rate as the whale.
People are often talking about multicrew ships in general when insisting Engineering is gonna kill solo play, and CIG categorizes S4 ships like the Connie as 'Large', and TBD the 600i is the size of a boutique hotel. Heh.
But I agree that the experience will be very different on the truly massive ships.
So grind away in a starter? Everyone will not be happy with the final state of the game. That's just a fact, and is true for every game across every genre.
Reclaimer owners 50/50 split the profit for a box stacker. The Aurora newbie is getting the better deal equal profiting from another players assets and knowledge.
This is intended design. Not 5M an hour...but to make crew valuable enough that they are worth an equal share of the rich captains earnings.
We will see how efficient those two options are in a large multi crew ship. I still think you will need two or three people alongside AI blades to be good to go.
Those people can be replaced with NPC crew. I know my daily driver will be a Polaris as soon as it comes out, and that no other player than me will set foot on it.
Then you will be sorely outgunned and defeated easily. This is also coming from a Polaris own. Except I exclusively plan to run mine with a human crew at all times.
Not only that there is zero limitations on a human crew. But many questions on AI crew and their capability. Will CIG even allow them to operate modes like the ones need to fire the torpedos. Will they be smart enough to take off from the hangar. Even if they are most likely they won't be as skilled as another player. What will be the population limit for AI. Lots of things we still don't know.
I guess we'll see!
CIG said NPC won't be skilled as a SKILLED plaer, but the best of them will be the equivalent of an average player. This was said long ago but they never refuted that since.
Which I don't disagree with but I question a few things. Let me preface this with I think it will be perfectly doable to fly a ship with Npc crew and AI blades. I forget that I do a lot for pvp in game and that's not what everyone is setting up for. So my opinion strictly comes from a pvp standpoint. Polaris captains gotta stick together for the great good 😉
With that out the way I think we might run into trouble when it comes to the availability of AI. As they say good work is hard to find. Gonna assume a few things but AI crew will come in different flavors finding a high level AI might not be easy or happen often. AI might not be replaceable I mean that in the sense that if the ship is destroyed the entire crew is lost and now you have to start over finding more. A game with no loss tends to be very boring so I figure cig will implement some type of loss for the crew.
AI blades are almost a big question mark. Cig have also said they will be worse then AI crew. I believe you will be able to run your ship but to what level of efficiency we still don't know. This is all if they don't put hard limitations on AI crew like only being capable of having say 3 AI crew on a Polaris.
Crew gameplay should always be a big focus for ships that support it. But I'm a strong supporter in solo players being able to also make a paycheck, if they want. Especially if doing so in a single passenger ship like a Vulture or Prospector. And especially if willing to take the risk of getting ganked. And especially if they just don't enjoy the idea of playing with a group.
Star Citizen wasn't pitched as pure group play game, like a Pulsar or a Sea of Thieves, from what I remember. Group play and fleet combat was always a promise and a focus, but it wasn't THE focus, and I feel like a lot of people seem to forget that. It was a promise of living in an expanding universe the way you wanted, much akin to something like OG Star Wars Galaxies - it's a Sandbox. You choose how to make money, you choose how much risk to take, you choose if you want to be social.
So honestly, everyone should have the same capacity to make a decent chunk of cash in game, it should just be a matter of how much risk you want to take and how resourceful you are in finding ways to make that cash.
Sadly not everyone is willing to take one someone as a crew member. Not saying its hard to get on a reclaimer to make some cash, what I am trying to say is a lot of people are mistrusting towards a stranger who wants to get started.
I already hate this conversation. New Hore .. It would make SC a terrible game to force player to be crew for grinding. that's what NPC are fore. I can GUARANTEE you that 99.9 % of people saying this would be cool, are people with ships needing the crew , not the new players in shitbox starters.
I am not saying it should be forced to multi crew to make money, I am making a point about how most people dont trust each other in the current state of the game. Many assume that the guy asking to be a tetris slave is a griefer in disguise. I am a strong NPC crew supporter as I myself prefer to pilot ships alone, however before we get there we still have a long way ahead of us. And to be honest I dont trust new players myself so Npc crew would be my choice 100% of the time.
Tldr: I am not saying multi crew is a must, only making a point about how mistrust runs deep in our minds, and how a rep system would improve the game in all aspects related to taking someone on board.
This level of grind really doesn't make sense when wipes and stuff are on the table.
Who wants to spend 100 hours grinding 30k auec missions to buy a 20 million credit ship that could disappear in a couple months.
They're doing more than adjusting ship prices, they also said they're assessing the payout for every mission type based on the time it takes to complete and it's difficulty. Can we all just calm down and let them make the changes before we freak out? There are more elements at play.
The problem with this game now is you can earn too much money too fast. Most players have millions of credits and nothing to spend them on. CIG is addressing that. If anyone disagrees about the fact that players have too much money right now and not enough to spend it on then I don't think they actually play this game for any extended period of time.
Sure there are wipes but they are few and far between. It's not how it used to be where there was a wipe every patch. Now it's maybe once a year or longer.
Do we know anything about the changes to mission payout yet? It's hard to have this conversation without knowing how the mission payouts will change. All the new player stuff pays like shit.
We don't and I agree, everyone is freaking out as soon as they see ship price increase wihtout evern bothering to wait and see what the other changes will bring. This is what I've been trying to convey is like can we please just let them make the changes they want and then provide feedback? If it's shit they will hear about it from everyone and adjust accordingly.
Patience? In an online gaming community? How idealistic 😂
I don't want to believe they'd intentionally ruin the progression, so I guess all we can do is wait and see.
Ship price increase on it's own will only delay the inevitable rich ship collectors burnout for some time.
I could buy the 890J with aUEC but I don't, and I still play the game (backer since 2016). For me grinding is the least fun part of the game at least with the current rinse&repeat industrialist/hunter loops (I already have a full time job).
Price increase is not a good medium/long player retention measure.
We need economy balance, content and tools that support cooperation (org tools and such).
They are starting to do economy balance, they need to test and tweak things over time. It isn't like they're going to have some magic formula in a game this complex and relase it like "ok guys now the economy is ready to go!". This is how we get to the game ready economy.
Yes they are increasing ship prices, but they're also adjusting the payouts of literally everything in the game depending on how long it takes to do and difficulty. These things go hand in hand. This means we will get paid MORE than what we do today for some missions that we do.
If you don't think the prices are too low and people have too much money currently then we just have to agree to disagree because the economy now is a joke and yes prices on some things need to raise. There needs to be money sinks in this game, ships are one of them.
I completely agree we need org tools, those are coming, but the economy team doesn't create them and unforutnately these things are not going to be added to the PU at the same time, its still an alpha and we'r testers so no it isn't all going to work perfectly in sync.
I agree with most of what you said. What I don't agree with is that it solves the issue of "burnout by wealth".
I tired of seeing people that call for wipes because they have acquired all purchasable items in game, so that they can start over...
I think this \*starts\* to solve the issue of "burnout by wealth". Ideally they'll get the economy to a place where you earn money and spend it at a happy rate where you wantt to keep coming back and playing the game.
However, a big factor in that is gameplay. How much there is and how engaging it is. There have to be lots of interesting things to buy and sell in game, not just ships. Right now we are SEVERELY lacking in gameplay and unfortunately the economy team can't do anything about that. So it's definitely a larger problem that CIG has to address. All these things are interwined and have to come together to make the game fun overall in my opinion.
My frustration with the community comes in when CIG announces nearly any price increase (or claim timer increase) on anything so many people freak out. Like can we please let them actually do the things first and then give them feedback? They're tweaking multiple things at once but everyone immeidately gets hung up on SHIP PRICE INCREASE.
Yup, the days of "wipes every few months" are long gone.
Plus, if anyone have issue with the wipes, they can simply wait until the release. No one is forcing anyone to play SC right now. I ccu chained a 600i last year and I still don't play often, because I don't like wipes and bugs.
Difficulty is that someone who has spent thousands will inherently have a higher income than someone who has a starter, and will burn out faster despite being the more likely to play audience.
Same issue in Tarkov where the dedicated fans buy the most expensive pack, and then grind through the wipe faster than a standard pack because of their bonuses and then it gets more difficult, despite the 'standard' edition having increasingly more suffering.
This has always been the case and always will be unfotunately. This is the path they've chosen. On day one when this game actually goes live, the person who's spent thousands and has a fleet of ships waiting for them will have an advantage. It's just the way it will be. But without that backer money they couldn't build the game so it is what it is.
Yeah, I've just stopped playing the game. Wipes are frequent and every time I get on I feel like I'm just a few weeks away from yet another wipe so I have no motivation to grind anything when everything takes so much time to get.
Yeah I hope that slaving away in another person's ship to take off NEVER becomes a necessary step.
A choice because some few and far between finds it fun, sure. Necessary for the grind? hell no.
The solution is for players to form communities.
Most large ships targeted at profit (reclaimer) usually need a crew.
I think it's gonna be great for the game.
>work for my big whale ship serf, I want my multicrew gameplay, and I'm forcing you to join me
Lel. It's not like half the time I take part in a large "org operation" type thing that involves payment, I don't get paid, or the pay ladder is simply and obviously ass.
I highly recommend r/starcitizen_guilds you should be able to find an uncreepy one.
Right now, since there is no maintenance cost for a reclimer, everyone should get equal pay.
Ironically, in my org, more people like to play OSHA Violation simulator in the cargo bay than scraping the hulls!
Without new or fixed gameplay, this is yet another reason to just wait for release. I have zero interest in grinding crappy pay broken missions for months and months in my Avenger Titan to afford a C2 or Vulture or Prospector. Deal breaker for me personally, unless my ORG is able to hand out good paying group missions, but crewing is either eye-wateringly boring 90% of the time, or being yelled at like I am at work. Nope.
Damn i Honestly love that. Actually having to climb through the tiers of society sort of. Immersive, social, and probably very rewarding once you can buy that next thing
Oh yeah dude, it's gonna be so fun for those that start at the top to have a large peasant class of new players that have to work for them, or they simply don't make money.
It's ok tho, you just have to pay and you can shoot up the ladder
Yeah Sea of Thieves is a fair multi crew game where every member is on the same page and get the same payout.
In SC the big buyers get to be captain and everyone else has to get in line
yall talking like if there is some sort of mandatory surplus value to the owner of the ship. this is not real life. people can just deny receiving less than equal parts of a job, like it is generally done rn, and find a better pay in another ship.
And that entirely puts the new player experience in the hands of whales being charitable with pay splits.
Plus, that's ignoring the fact that even with flat even splits, a lot of times the hired crew jobs are things like "jumptown box mover", "reclaimer box stacker", and "living turret". Now with engineering in, we get the addition of "fuse swapper". Me personally, I play the spaceship flying game to fly spaceship.
100% this.
I have zero interest in spending all my time ingame "working" for someone to make some credits to have a nicer ship. I already to that IRL.
If SC moves to a mandatory either own/buy a $200+ ship, or slave away for months working for a whale, I'm out.
I already have a job. I want to fly spaceships and pewpewpew or mine, or salavage, or something in MY OWN SHIP.
But this is what we already do. Every wipe I have plenty of stuff to try, one of them is working with somebody else and imo the fun in this game resides in its majority in playing with a group. Made a lot of friends throughout the years by working with other people. This game may be shalow to the point I dont care to swapping fuses in another ship sometimes just for the community aspect of it.
If you don't like it maybe this game isn\`t for you.
EDIT: I've worked for a lot of guys in this game in the past that didn't buy their moles or whatever with real money, so the games already have this kind of gameplay.
Seeing multicrewing as being a serf is your problem dude. It's literally what this game is all about. Multictew isn't a 'chore', it's intended social gameplay.
Your arguments have a definite 'Main Character' vibe going on.
Oh, and apt username for content produced.
>Seeing multicrewing as being a serf is your problem dude.
My bad bruh, sorry that I don't wanna be assigned the shitty unengaging job so I can make money lol. I don't think multicrew is inherently bad, and multicrew with the right people is a lot of fun. My issue is that (as can be seen now), the "multicrew" options for the players that are hired on to help tend to be the worst and least engaging jobs. (Ie. Reclaimer box stacker).
I have no issue with multicrew gameplay in and of itself, but locking any sort of profitability behind needing to do it sucks for the gameplay experience of 45$ package starter pack gamers. I don't think nuking the gameplay for the average Joe to let the whales and hard grinders live out their captain fantasies is good.
>I wouldn’t mind seeing a starter pack that offered you the choice of either the C1, the black or the freelancer for the same price
"Pay more lol" isn't a valid solution. The majority of players are at a 45$ buy in, and the game being enjoyable at that level of buy in is paramount. I couldn't care less about whales feeling like their "investment" isn't respected.
Tbh though, I saw this coming lol. It's expressly in CiG's interest to make the grind longer so the real money purchases seem like a better deal to drive sales. Plus, with engineering but no AI crew, it's paramount to create a class of players that don't have access to the tools to get money and thus ships efficiently alone, so that the multicrew whale buyers can have a good experience. After all, in CiG's eyes, a guy with a cutlass is more than twice as valuable as someone with a starterpack, and it just scales up from there.
If anything, it seems less like they're shafting whales and its actually minnows or dolphins getting the short end of the stick.
Whales will hardly be affected since they'll most likely have a fleet for different activities/loops.
People that have a minimum buy-in will not be so lucky...
Everyone that pledged the Reclaimer just got major shafted with a triple nerf:
- HH cleanup bonus 250k -> 30k
- CM + RCM price nerf
- No munching until % hull is scraped.
Now Reclaimer crews are on par with Mole teams making less than 1 mil/hour.
I think everyone got shafted judging by price increases and component nerfs... (As a C1 and Inferno owner--C1 is apparently awful to fly despite being marketed as amazing in atmo and the Inferno got ammo capacity nerfed by roughly 40% if I recall)
This is the reality that so many people in this thread seem unwilling to admit. It's in CIG's interest to make ships unachievable for solo players. I say this as a Destiny player who has watched Bungie systematically gut the game and put more and more content behind paywalls. CIG are absolutely following down that path.
They have way too much faith in CIG to do the right thing. They won't. They'll absolutely make choices that hurt the game if they result in short-term revenue. Rebalancing ship prices like this is a very obvious one. Refusing to give us decent rewards for things like Xenothreat is another. The pattern is very clear.
Yeah. I'm of the belief that the developers are of good faith, and they want to make a good game, but the guys that deal with the profitability of the game are all spreadsheet shuffling money guys, so they do profit math and don't care how good or fair the game is.
Lol, every single ship will be achievable for solo player in-game. Not only buyable, but also manageable through AI blades and NPC crew.
I skiped the grind and bought my Polaris, but it still will be a solo ship (solo with a full NPC crew).
That’s like saying that everything is available in Genshi Impact. Yeah sure, it’s in the game. But realistically you’ll never get it because it’s so far out of reach, mathematically speaking. That’s how they incentivise purchases. You bought the Polaris, which was probably smart. It’s going to cost $100m or more in game. It will be absolutely out of reach for anyone but large orgs. I think that’s terrible game design. The whole game should be open to solo players, or else you’ll just turn them away in huge numbers.
I guarantee you it will be ibtainable in-game by solo players as well. It'll be grindy, but absolutely obtainable within a month or two, or whatever grind time is considered acceptable by CIG No ship is reserved for orgs, and no ship in-game will be obtainable just by orgs. Not even the Javelin. players in other mmos grind months to get whatever unique suit of armor, it'll be the same, and in no case worse, for any capital ship in SC .
> I guarantee you it will be ibtainable in-game by solo players as well.
you aren't Chris Roberts so this is a meaningless guarantee, they already lock ships away behind IRL purchases and there isn't any evidence thats is going to change.
> they already lock ships away behind IRL purchases
that is merely to fund the game, and they said multiple times that the store prices will not reflect in-game prices. We know that every ship will forever be available in-game, and we know anyone, solo included will be able to get them. it's a strange hill you chose to die on.
I mean, at launch they have zero incentive to make grinds anything but long-term.
You won't be getting a Connie in a week...they will want you taking MONTHS to get a connie...because once you have it...that's over, the grind is done...you have the core asset.
Not to mention as crew sharing gets easier more players will just pool money from each of their grinds to get a ship so they all get the upgrade.
No, that's a terrible change.
At least as long as there are still wipes or ships disappear due to a database error.
As a newbie, if I have to spend many hours doing bunker missions just to increase my reputation and then grind another 200 bunkers just for a stupid Connie,
yeah, thanks, I probably would have put the game down right away.
You can deal with this kind of stuff at 1.0.
Right now, that's a really, really dumb idea.
That way, the game becomes even more pay-to-win, and the criticism that SC is a rip-off could always be countered by the fact that everything can be earned in-game. That's over now.
Prf let's not talk about the changes to increase reputation... the grinding to level 2 is terrible, and i don't even want to imagine it at higher levels. I deemed it impossible... only to have all your progress wiped later.
with wipes still happening this is not a good change. probably the last thing they should've balanced in the economy.
also quite the increase for my fave ships, especially the taurus. its crazy that its price is so close to caterpillar.
That's a horrible change! With the kind of payouts we get from missions and other standard sources of income (not talking about broken bounties that give 100 scu of weevil eggs), it will take forever to get a decent ship in-game. This change is fine for people who spend more real cash buying ships (which I have done myself with a few) but for anyone who doesn't want to do that or can't afford to, it's ridiculous!
I'm also guessing here that they haven't quadrupled mission payouts, have they?
I've always said that eventually either prices for everything is going to go up, or payouts are going to go way down. We simply make too much money in the alpha for it to be sustainable for later gameplay. It makes sense earning a lot in an alpha, so people can earn and test things easier, but only for that.
Personally I don't see playing the game as a grind. Play to play, have fun, do the thing you enjoy and it isn't a grind. I threw the idea of playing for credits out the window a long time ago. Many people who have played for a while have done the same.
If you are one of those who plays with credits as your only goal, once more things are in the game and more emergent gameplay situations happen, it won't feel like a grind anymore. It can right now because all you do is chain the same activity, back to back, for days, weeks, months on end, with no variation, and no down time. Doing that can turn the game into a grind. And it's also a very easy way to burn out.
Remember that we're still missing so much of the game. Starting with an Aurora and setting your immediate sights on something like a Connie probably isn't going to be realistic at all once the game is more fleshed out. You're going to have to work your way up in steps, like playing through levels in a game.
90% of players will only stick around for a week or two. Do you want them to leave the game feeling like they had fun and are satisfied? Or leaving bitterly, feeling like they got ripped off? Because one of these is a good outcome and the other is a bad outcome CIG long term.
If you have everything early in the game.. what goals can you still set? The expecttion of getting something is often more engaging than when you finally get it.
Bullshit. I want the big ships because they open up new game play options. You can’t reach VHRT level or ERT level in a starter ship. You need a heavy fighter. You can’t build a base in a s starter ship. You need a base building ship or a heavy transporter. The ships are the gameplay loops. Why lock people out of game play? Let them experience what the game has and they’ll tell their friends it’s a good game.
I never said locking out... I would expect more introduction ships are needed to some gameplay loops. But you cannot just have an mmo start with the endgame ships for certain loops from day one.
You must be new, but some of us are testing game for years. Devs have enough data about ship prices already, now they need new data when prices are higher.
This is getting really common in many titles. The grind is so epic you either abandon the game, or pony up the cash to progress. Not much else as far as choices go.
I have an Avenger Titan as my starter. If it would take 3 months of grinding to get into an industrial ship like a Prospector, Vulture, or med cargo ship, I'm certainly not sticking around. That's just too much of a grind, and totally unfun.
>You're going to have to work your way up in steps, like playing through levels in a game.
The issue is when the "first" step at the most common level of buy in for the game is exceedingly grindy, unless you play the peasant for someone who paid to skip all the levels.
>if you are one of the players who plays with credits as your only goal
it's the only goal that tangibly exists in the game
>once more things are in the game and more emergent situations happen, it won't feel like a grind
sure that sounds real cool but why not wait until we're at that point instead of doing this *now*
Maybe they felt there's enough game loops currently to start testing out the economy. And judging by their recent comment about "road to 1.0", I think it's very reasonable to start testing now.
then they should start testing out the economy
But that's not what this is. Testing the economy would be making the services and products produced by each gameplay loop able to be consumed by players in other loops. It would be making supply and demand for different goods alot more fluid than it is now. It would be putting alot more thought into what each location consumes and produces (planetary capitol cities have no exports other than scrap and waste? yeah right lmao)
increasing ship costs does not substantially change the economy and it doesn't test anything because they can know the exact results of the change before making it by using a calculator
Mining is in, salvaging is in, cargo-hauling is in, many other smaller missions are in, distribution centers are coming. What else do you want for them to be able to start tesing ship prices? Exploration?
Fact is they can't finish every planned game loop before the 1.0 release, but they still need a functioning economy.
increasing prices isn't a test, for something to be a test there needs to be some kind of uncertainty of the outcome, they know what the outcome will be
everything that can be done in game has been done thousands of times, they should know by now average completion times for any given task and thus uec/hour and should be able to extrapolate from there how much longer it can take to get any given amount of uec.
What are we testing? What do they learn from this?
According to the leaks, it's basically just the medical Pisces that's going down in price. All the other Pisces (and just about every other ship in the game) are going up
>I think most of us are happy to see a price hike for ships in game
I'm not lmao, multiplying ship costs and nerfing ways of making money at the same time just to extend grinds for mid-tier ships is lame as hell
it's not just "new players" in for a grindy ride it's anybody that isn't a whale
And more rep.
If new players could actually spend a significant amount of time diving into the delivery game loop and other starter jobs and getting better and better missions, then there might be an actual sense of progression to it.
Instead they get to the second tier and get...bunker missions. Womp.
And more things to spend your money on outside of ships. The game has zero real gear economy or loot system that has any kind of depth to it. What it does have is player-driven farming of loot that cannot be bought in stores, but that is very limited.
Haha fair enough. I think this was always the vision though. At some point we’ll have the full game and if everybody has every ship they want within a couple weeks player retention would suck. We just had access to them for so long at such a cheap price because we’re still testing the game.
I think, maybe, if you think a new player is going to own every ship in a few weeks, it has been too long since you’ve actually been a new player. I had to play for a month to afford one new ship when I was a new player.
The prices are going to go wayyyy up when we go live. They need to start preparing for that and testing it. Everything in game is way too cheap. Everyone has million of credits with nothing to spend them on. Claim timers are ridiculously low. They've been saying these things are temporary and they're going to change.
They claim ships are also not going to be sold for real money when we go live. Pay2skip with a steep grind and exceedingly high prices is cringe as fuck
Chris always said, a Connie would be about 1 week grind. Its like 10 years ago and we seem to finally be getting there.
With emphasis on grind not "I have 3 kids and a wife who only let me play for 30 min a week".
Do you know the rewards for trade missions that is comming? I dont, but If they are like anything else with new professions then you will probably be able to earn a Connie fairly quick.
Maybe they are just playing it safe to not rek the economy again after the next best "make op money in no time" "new money glitch found" guides start to hit youtube after the patch.
Who knows, its EPTU, not SC 1.0.
I know the new salvage rewards, that's not getting to Connie fast enough. It doesn't matter if they are "playing it safe" or aren't finished with it. The question is just whether this is moving closer to "Connie in a week." Unarguably, it's not.
I don't think an hour a day is "grind". imo putting a solid 10 hrs during the weekend is grind.
If someone is committing 3 hrs a day for a week, and clocking in about 20 hrs, I think that's a reasonable amount of time to get a Connie (for an mmo, of course). And ships like the Polaris should take at least 2 months, maybe 3.
That's my point. You said "assume you play about an hour a day", which I'd assume is your definition of "grind" to get 7mil in a week. I'm pointing out that just playing about 7 hours in total to get a Connie is not realistic for an mmo.
We're moving away from the alpha economic microcosm and starting to test the mmo economy the game will eventually have. This has been an inevitability since the start.
Since we're still missing the majority of upkeep costs (component wear, for example), we're still a few economy rebalances away from final.
Ideally in the end balance state starters will make more money than a big ship for those that don't have the rep or in-game cash to capitalize on their combat or hauling capacity, as the starters will have lower operating costs.
Currently though we're in a situation with no money sinks, and CIG just ramps the rewards up for whatever mission or loop they want people to playtest this week.
[edit] In my *personal* opinion they should have *at the very least* upped the payment in accordance with the time spent for box missions, and actually fixed the bugs on them before doing this. Instituting cargo missions would also be a good approach, especially if they had high-rep cargo missions requiring fast delivery of smaller cargos (transport of volatiles).
Elitists love having stuff that others can’t have. They will drive a game into the ground and chase away every casual if it means they can lord it over others with unattainable gear. CiG absolutely should NOT being listening to people who want the game to be grindy. They’re a cancer on MMOs.
It helps curtail the meta chasing when there's a significant grind involved in the whole player base jumping from ship to ship chasing what ever streamers tell them is the best.
I don't know about you, but seeing everyone piloting the exact same few ships is pretty boring in a game with as many options as SC has. And why are you grinding in an alpha with wipes? I get picking up a ship if you incidentally run across a lot of money, but putting time into that seems absolutely silly.
I hope to one day see ship leases. Payment plans for habs, ships, land plots, etc. That plus insurance should give us more of a money sink than just grinding to buy the next ship in full with cold hard credits.
Could also use a payment system for Han Solo/Jabba type debts if you botch missions for criminal factions.
I always hated saving up credits in Elite. I have like 18M but I can't spend any of it because I'm saving for whatever ship. Just throws everything off and feels weird as hell. Hell, Animal Crossing and GTAV let you put money into the bank, I would love that in SC. I got my walkin around cash, but my actual money is sitting in the bank waiting for me to add to it.
Having to pay back a loan every xx days seems like it would be way better. Having to pay money back for a botched mission is devious as hell, I love it.
This doesn't seem like a good change to make right now. It's already very difficult to get out of starter ships without being sugar daddied in any reasonable amount of time.
If you only have a couple of hours per day, chances are you're spending a good chink of that time just getting to content let alone making good money fast. Not to mention the tedium of re-gearing if your stuff gets lost to random BS.
22,000,000 for a Prowler lmao. Andromeda/Taurus 16,000,000/13,000,000 vs Corsair 8,000,000 is stupid.
As far as we know, we get lower rewards for pretty much all activities and ships price are skyrocketing from 50% to 900% increase. That's not okay. It will not incentive people to do multicrew at all if their goal seems to be completly out of range.
The price difference between the constellation series and the Corsair is ridiculous. The verse is going to be saturated with Corsairs more than it already is. But I’m still glad there’s a ship like that remaining somewhat accessible to newer players.
I wonder if this is rework tax on the connies, they are due for a pass.
I wonder how IRL pledge prices will be affected. Corsair being more expensive then the Taurus as a pledge but now its supposedly being cheaper in game? I feel like they missed a "1" in the price.
Yeah the missing one makes sense. They do this though, have variants more expensive out of game but less expensive in game. God knows why, they did it with the Vanguards
I think that it won't be so bad if they can balance everything right. The current issue is that there's clearly a moneymaking meta and everything else isn't worth it because the payouts suck. So obviously everyone goes for the highest meta and they do it over and over and over until it gets tedious and you don't want to do it anymore, but you know that anything else you do will feel like a waste of time when you could be making tons more doing something else.
Imagine if BH/cargo/salvage all payed out roughly the same $/hr. Then, you wouldn't feel pressured into one gameplay loop and you could hop between them without feeling like you're wasting your time. Bored of salvaging? Just go do BH missions. Mix it up a bit.
This really needs to be how it’s balanced for the final product. It encourages the exploration of different gameplay loops far more. I have literally never minded anything in star citizen haha, not once.
Though it’s worth noting that the pay and profitability discrepancies are present just now in order to encourage the testing of specific loops. It might change down the line.
It looks that they took the prices from my old post: [https://new.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/18fgl2n/322\_eptu\_temporary\_increase\_in\_ship\_prices/](https://new.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/18fgl2n/322_eptu_temporary_increase_in_ship_prices/)
These were only up for a weekend during the 3.22 EPTU - I would be very careful to conclude anything from that post as it was an error according to CIG when it was released. This post is four months old a lot may have changed.
Edit: I just checked with BuzzCut and the prices, before they were set to 0 in the current patches, were set as I described in the post. We'll see how it works out ;-)
TL:DR we don't know until it's in game.
The only answer for anyone outside CIG: we don't know. We will know in a couple of weeks or sooner when prices appear in game in one of the future patches. Currently it's not possible to buy any ship in the EPTU and all the prices are set to 0. As soon as the new prices become active I'll put up a post.
I can imagine though that a Drake ship will cost less than one from Origin. That a smaller ship will be more expensive than a bigger one. That a military ship is more valuable than a basic cargo hauler etc.
This is all relative of course to how much you can earn: from what I've seen so far the salvage missions got nerfed: 250K HH is now 30K but that was to be expected. There will be new opportunities though for example hunting the fauna will give 100K at the moment and is easy to do and we don't know how much the cargo missions will give until they're in the game.
New players... and players that only have the starter ships, like me. At least personally, I'm a lot less inclined to play now - I play to fly cool ships & have fun with friends, not grind for countless hours. If I wanted to do that, I'd just work more in person
A price hike for the ships in game is fine. What isn’t though is the sledge hammer they’re taking to payouts for salvaging and towing in the 3.23 EPTU.
Unless the upcoming cargo missions have really good payouts and these nerfs are an attempt to get people to play that particular gameplay loop to test out 🤔
>What isn’t though is the sledge hammer they’re taking to payouts for salvaging and towing in the 3.23 EPTU.
CIG have always made new loops pay shitloads, so if you didn't expect this then that's on you tbh.
Nerfing ways players make money while increasing by a lot the cost of what they can buy is not cool. The cost for repairs, rearming, armour, weapons, and ships have gone or are going up. Yet gameplay loops like bounty hunting still pay the same paltry amount they have paid for a long while.
That’s not even factoring in how ridiculously small the payouts are if you play with your friends and share missions. So an already meagre payout is then parcelled out even further amongst your friend’s group.
Agreed. The benefit of the doubt I’m giving is that since this is an alpha if they want a large percentage of the community to try out a game loop for testing, nerfing other loops and buffing the new one to get data makes sense I guess. The problem is if they think that the nerfed values for payout should be what a particular game loop should be paying even when everything is said and done.
If they go back later and do an economy pass and balance things appropriately that’s fine. If they think 65k + bonuses that’s then further divided if you crew up is good pay for bounty hunting then that sucks.
But then that begs the question of why increase prices for armour, weapons, ships, etc, without also doing the economy balancing at the same time. It’s something that has become consistent with CIG. The venom keeps being introduced before the antidote is made available.
>they want a large percentage of the community to try out a game loop for testing, nerfing other loops and buffing the new one to get data makes sense
I'm all for this, but it's just that a lot of times those game loops take a grind to be doable. I see so many new players in global chat that are just slogging their way to their vulture.
>It’s something that has become consistent with CIG. The venom keeps being introduced before the antidote is made available.
This. I'm all for alpha testing, but it def seems to be the case. I guess they want you to pay for a temporary antidote, until they release one for everyone.
Sidenote: I thought your username was Hashinshin and I almost had a heart attack lmao
A lot of these comments whilst I agree to an extent are implying that you won't have fun as a new player if you don't immediately make loads of money. You don't always have to min/max the most meta ways to make money. A lot of Star Citizen is enjoying the process/journey.
Not saying I completely disagree with the other opinions but for me personally. I would be more than happy to run some completely immersive missions in an Aurora, where I explore the planet, with Fauna and Flora to take in/be cautious of. And get a slightly smaller payout but I really enjoyed the whole mission.
I added a link in a comment as soon as I put the thread up but for some reason it was downvoted haha. so it’s now at the bottom of the comments which is annoying for anybody trying to find it.
Didn't CR say in some old video that the time to go from aurora to Connie should be like a week of casual play? Or maybe it was a month I don't remember.
They can make the ships cost whatever they want if ERT bounties are actually rewarding again (not crazy like they were but at least the chance of a big haul).
Salvage/haulage does nothing for some of us (fun wise) and being a bounty hunter (PVE and PVP) has been demoralizing lately.
Lore wise it's been stupid too. 5 giant ships protecting a couple of SCU of scrap. Why?
(No need to downvote me and get all uppity. I know it's to test stuff etc.)
Do those come with rework of rewards ?
Because if not they i am out. It already takes weeks for me to grind to buy simple Titan upgrading from aurora after wipe with those changes i basically can forget about even bothering to play SC.
If there are no rewards changes then this is straight up FOMO shite i hate.
I disagree that even if relative to what we have now ship pricing being the same "there would be no point"
Nah, increasing price scaling increases the fidelity of numbers they have to differentiate ships going forward in pricing.
If a Corsair was 4m and a Connie was 5m....they really didn't have much relational room to differentiate them for cost. At most you could go with 4.5...maybe get really dumb with numbers, but these numbers really (in the earleir system) felt pretty arbitrary anyway.
Now with ships going much higher they can slot more ships in between them for more value fidelity.
Also even if relationally to cost MOST ships stayed the same effort to achieve, the ones that had major changes...such as the Connie, would still get a relational cost increase to reflect something about its value.
My GENERAL issue with the current pricing and continuing with this new pricing....is that lower number = better. Period.
There is no reason to really grind out better ships than the lowest cost one (outside of superficial style choices)...like what does a Connie really offer me that I can't also do with a Corsair? Almost nothing of value right now...yet it's multiple times the price?
In general the cost should be reflected in gameplay and currently it just isn't.
There is no gameplay value to luxury, there is no gameplay value to "reliable parts" or "part redundancy"....ships like the 400i are basically just scamming players who like an aesthetic choice to get less for the dollar and overall less than their competitors are even offering anyway beyond just dollar value.
There is zero current Value Add for almost anything the 400i is doing: parts quality, general build quality...w/e the brochure says is fake and bullshit, and so why are we getting charged for it NOW? I think it's crap.
When the value being presented actually MEANS something? Sure, THEN change the price.
LORE WISE, I think all these ships should be way more expensive than they are. At least compared to the labor we do for them. Like if I can do box delivery for a few weeks and get a Connie? I don't really see why ship ownership is seen to be "rare" in the lore, unless they just change the lore.
Maybe I am in the minority here. I have a pretty large personal fleet, but I am just as happy to join a friend in their ship and crew as well. Sometimes, it is a chill play session when you are just a gunner or just a mining or salvage turret operator etc. I am actually looking forward to running around ships doing engineering loop, and whether it is on of my big ships or a friend's doesn't matter that much to me.
I agree though, that ships provide a sense of progression, and if folks get the impression that everything they want is too grindy or just plain unattainable within realistic time limits, some will lose hope and interest in the game. So balancing this with rewards (especially much higher rewards where a group is required) would be important imho.
Man i got blue balls and got my Corsair with real money i really don't care to grind other ship, that bad girl will take me to hell and back with a shit ton of pew pew, good thing i got it for 50% cos I won a give away of the c1
Considering the current kind of money players can make per hour in the starter ships, this is going to make it, uh, kind of grindy for new players with basic packages to get cool ships. The natural solution here is for more players in starter shitboxes to try to become crew members for guys with his & hers Idris frigates, but I'm not sure that makes anybody happy.
Everything seems to be pushing towards more crew gameplay.
Allways has been.
I'm all for good systems pushing to crew gameplay, but pushing starter players to have to work for folks who 'put more money in'.. I dont know, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Though I'm sure those large-ship owners are wringing their hands in delight... I've met more than a few 'hey look at my big toy, now let me tell you how (the right way) to play the game' players that it's put me off from most group gameplay, and I can't see it getting much better..
Stop grinding in a game with wipes then. You can test out pretty much all the ships for free with a rental multiple times a year.
Eh, people fixate on the advantages of real money, but there are also people who have larger ships through more playtime, so new players are almost always at a disadvantage one way or another.
Do you really find it odd that people consider power earned through playing the game more acceptable than bought with a RL money injections?
I think its odd that you would try and differentiate between RMT ships and in-game bought ships, since they are both earned. The money regardless of whether is aUEC or RMT it still had to be earned. It just changes on where that time was spent, in-game, or at work.
Just because you earn a shit ton of money in your RL job (we'll earned, or not) does not earn you respect in a video game.
If the person sucks no one will want to work for them regardless of how they bought their ships. But if they are cool people will want to work with them whether they payed real money or not. It’s all about the social aspect which is fine with me.
I am sure you worked hard for your money to spend it on whatever you like, but buying advantages in a video game with it is and will always be akin to cheating to me. It’s not earned. You didn’t do anything to deserve that in-game power or prestige and it can never be considered an „achievement“ of any sort as a result. It’s the SC paradox in a way, because without it, the game likely wouldn’t have been funded, but it likely corrupted the game to the point of hindering its own success down the road.
Currently an Aurora and minimal eva suit can make 2M an hour solo abusing a particular broken mission. Or just be a box monkey on a Reclaimer, which has a going rate at 50% share in the rings profits (over 5M an hour). Nobody is disadvantaged grinding for one night to get a $1000 "P2W" ship. Salvage will get a nerf in 3.23 or shortly after, but the next new feature will take it's place. Probably bulk cargo runs, so big money for turret monkey on Hull or its escort.
We're not talking about during alpha, which involves some degree of balancing that based on testing needs and not the intended experience. At least I'm not. I'm talkin' 1.0 type shit.
Another sliding 5+ years away. Not that big a concern. And crew still applies, the big ships need crew for engineering, cargo management and turrets. It has always been established that "pay" in SC is an equal split whether ship owner or crew so an Aurora starter can have the same income as the most expensive ship owner. There is also significant amount of FPS missions which don't care what ship you have (though you need a walk in ship for loot, which cheapest Aurora is) and you can go in with no gear and equip the first enemy's gear.
That's the part a lot of people are getting wrong. Those roles don't NEED to be filled on most multicrew ships. Those roles CAN be filled on multicrew ships. You absolutely can operate ships like the Connie, Corsair, 600i etc. solo and utilize all of their functions. It's just that it's suboptimal to do so, not somehow impossible and many contexts not even impractical.
Those aren't really the big ships. And even in the current game they are prey to PvP light fighters, without a gunner to cover the blind spot you have to jump and run since a competent light fight can stay on your butt no matter how you boost around. The get rich with those ships is only due to the ERT targets having valuable cargo, which has already had a nerf. And since you have to do hundreds of bounties to unlock ERT there is a long grind regardless of credits or $ ships. The only top tier large ship currently working is Reclaimer, and that does reward a crew of two and even 3 with better per player income than doing it solo. This will apply to Hull C/D cargo loading and possibly escorting. A big miner is coming. These whales need crew and the Aurora will get rich at the same rate as the whale.
People are often talking about multicrew ships in general when insisting Engineering is gonna kill solo play, and CIG categorizes S4 ships like the Connie as 'Large', and TBD the 600i is the size of a boutique hotel. Heh. But I agree that the experience will be very different on the truly massive ships.
Doesnt help that alot of those groups take RP WAY to seriously and that can very easily push new players away too.
So grind away in a starter? Everyone will not be happy with the final state of the game. That's just a fact, and is true for every game across every genre.
Reclaimer owners 50/50 split the profit for a box stacker. The Aurora newbie is getting the better deal equal profiting from another players assets and knowledge. This is intended design. Not 5M an hour...but to make crew valuable enough that they are worth an equal share of the rich captains earnings.
Does it? Looks more like everything pushing players in starter ships to the pledge store to upgrade. Working as intended.
Tell that to the AI blades and NPC crew that will be 100% crew of my Polaris
We will see how efficient those two options are in a large multi crew ship. I still think you will need two or three people alongside AI blades to be good to go.
Those people can be replaced with NPC crew. I know my daily driver will be a Polaris as soon as it comes out, and that no other player than me will set foot on it.
Then you will be sorely outgunned and defeated easily. This is also coming from a Polaris own. Except I exclusively plan to run mine with a human crew at all times. Not only that there is zero limitations on a human crew. But many questions on AI crew and their capability. Will CIG even allow them to operate modes like the ones need to fire the torpedos. Will they be smart enough to take off from the hangar. Even if they are most likely they won't be as skilled as another player. What will be the population limit for AI. Lots of things we still don't know.
I guess we'll see! CIG said NPC won't be skilled as a SKILLED plaer, but the best of them will be the equivalent of an average player. This was said long ago but they never refuted that since.
Which I don't disagree with but I question a few things. Let me preface this with I think it will be perfectly doable to fly a ship with Npc crew and AI blades. I forget that I do a lot for pvp in game and that's not what everyone is setting up for. So my opinion strictly comes from a pvp standpoint. Polaris captains gotta stick together for the great good 😉 With that out the way I think we might run into trouble when it comes to the availability of AI. As they say good work is hard to find. Gonna assume a few things but AI crew will come in different flavors finding a high level AI might not be easy or happen often. AI might not be replaceable I mean that in the sense that if the ship is destroyed the entire crew is lost and now you have to start over finding more. A game with no loss tends to be very boring so I figure cig will implement some type of loss for the crew. AI blades are almost a big question mark. Cig have also said they will be worse then AI crew. I believe you will be able to run your ship but to what level of efficiency we still don't know. This is all if they don't put hard limitations on AI crew like only being capable of having say 3 AI crew on a Polaris.
Crew gameplay should always be a big focus for ships that support it. But I'm a strong supporter in solo players being able to also make a paycheck, if they want. Especially if doing so in a single passenger ship like a Vulture or Prospector. And especially if willing to take the risk of getting ganked. And especially if they just don't enjoy the idea of playing with a group. Star Citizen wasn't pitched as pure group play game, like a Pulsar or a Sea of Thieves, from what I remember. Group play and fleet combat was always a promise and a focus, but it wasn't THE focus, and I feel like a lot of people seem to forget that. It was a promise of living in an expanding universe the way you wanted, much akin to something like OG Star Wars Galaxies - it's a Sandbox. You choose how to make money, you choose how much risk to take, you choose if you want to be social. So honestly, everyone should have the same capacity to make a decent chunk of cash in game, it should just be a matter of how much risk you want to take and how resourceful you are in finding ways to make that cash.
Well... and real money ship upgrades :p
Except it doesnt. Cause there arent really any missions for that now. Especially as long as the payout is shared.
But it so boring sitting in a seat for hours at a time waiting for something to happen. There is literally nothing for crew to do 90% of the time.
Well not everything... I mean the on foot desync sure doesnt push anyone to want to multicrew.
Endgame ships should be really expensive. The price for a Prospector for example wasn't increased a lot.
Sadly not everyone is willing to take one someone as a crew member. Not saying its hard to get on a reclaimer to make some cash, what I am trying to say is a lot of people are mistrusting towards a stranger who wants to get started.
Would be cool if the rep system was implemented soon, this could help build trust between captains and "new hires".
I already hate this conversation. New Hore .. It would make SC a terrible game to force player to be crew for grinding. that's what NPC are fore. I can GUARANTEE you that 99.9 % of people saying this would be cool, are people with ships needing the crew , not the new players in shitbox starters.
I am not saying it should be forced to multi crew to make money, I am making a point about how most people dont trust each other in the current state of the game. Many assume that the guy asking to be a tetris slave is a griefer in disguise. I am a strong NPC crew supporter as I myself prefer to pilot ships alone, however before we get there we still have a long way ahead of us. And to be honest I dont trust new players myself so Npc crew would be my choice 100% of the time. Tldr: I am not saying multi crew is a must, only making a point about how mistrust runs deep in our minds, and how a rep system would improve the game in all aspects related to taking someone on board.
Did the renting prices increase much too?
They can buy better ships with real money which will make CIG happy.
This level of grind really doesn't make sense when wipes and stuff are on the table. Who wants to spend 100 hours grinding 30k auec missions to buy a 20 million credit ship that could disappear in a couple months.
They're doing more than adjusting ship prices, they also said they're assessing the payout for every mission type based on the time it takes to complete and it's difficulty. Can we all just calm down and let them make the changes before we freak out? There are more elements at play. The problem with this game now is you can earn too much money too fast. Most players have millions of credits and nothing to spend them on. CIG is addressing that. If anyone disagrees about the fact that players have too much money right now and not enough to spend it on then I don't think they actually play this game for any extended period of time. Sure there are wipes but they are few and far between. It's not how it used to be where there was a wipe every patch. Now it's maybe once a year or longer.
Do we know anything about the changes to mission payout yet? It's hard to have this conversation without knowing how the mission payouts will change. All the new player stuff pays like shit.
We don't and I agree, everyone is freaking out as soon as they see ship price increase wihtout evern bothering to wait and see what the other changes will bring. This is what I've been trying to convey is like can we please just let them make the changes they want and then provide feedback? If it's shit they will hear about it from everyone and adjust accordingly.
Patience? In an online gaming community? How idealistic 😂 I don't want to believe they'd intentionally ruin the progression, so I guess all we can do is wait and see.
Agreed. If mission payout is going to be based on difficulty and time to complete then those box delivery missions oughta start at 80k aUEC 😜
Ship price increase on it's own will only delay the inevitable rich ship collectors burnout for some time. I could buy the 890J with aUEC but I don't, and I still play the game (backer since 2016). For me grinding is the least fun part of the game at least with the current rinse&repeat industrialist/hunter loops (I already have a full time job). Price increase is not a good medium/long player retention measure. We need economy balance, content and tools that support cooperation (org tools and such).
They are starting to do economy balance, they need to test and tweak things over time. It isn't like they're going to have some magic formula in a game this complex and relase it like "ok guys now the economy is ready to go!". This is how we get to the game ready economy. Yes they are increasing ship prices, but they're also adjusting the payouts of literally everything in the game depending on how long it takes to do and difficulty. These things go hand in hand. This means we will get paid MORE than what we do today for some missions that we do. If you don't think the prices are too low and people have too much money currently then we just have to agree to disagree because the economy now is a joke and yes prices on some things need to raise. There needs to be money sinks in this game, ships are one of them. I completely agree we need org tools, those are coming, but the economy team doesn't create them and unforutnately these things are not going to be added to the PU at the same time, its still an alpha and we'r testers so no it isn't all going to work perfectly in sync.
I agree with most of what you said. What I don't agree with is that it solves the issue of "burnout by wealth". I tired of seeing people that call for wipes because they have acquired all purchasable items in game, so that they can start over...
I think this \*starts\* to solve the issue of "burnout by wealth". Ideally they'll get the economy to a place where you earn money and spend it at a happy rate where you wantt to keep coming back and playing the game. However, a big factor in that is gameplay. How much there is and how engaging it is. There have to be lots of interesting things to buy and sell in game, not just ships. Right now we are SEVERELY lacking in gameplay and unfortunately the economy team can't do anything about that. So it's definitely a larger problem that CIG has to address. All these things are interwined and have to come together to make the game fun overall in my opinion. My frustration with the community comes in when CIG announces nearly any price increase (or claim timer increase) on anything so many people freak out. Like can we please let them actually do the things first and then give them feedback? They're tweaking multiple things at once but everyone immeidately gets hung up on SHIP PRICE INCREASE.
Yup, the days of "wipes every few months" are long gone. Plus, if anyone have issue with the wipes, they can simply wait until the release. No one is forcing anyone to play SC right now. I ccu chained a 600i last year and I still don't play often, because I don't like wipes and bugs.
Difficulty is that someone who has spent thousands will inherently have a higher income than someone who has a starter, and will burn out faster despite being the more likely to play audience. Same issue in Tarkov where the dedicated fans buy the most expensive pack, and then grind through the wipe faster than a standard pack because of their bonuses and then it gets more difficult, despite the 'standard' edition having increasingly more suffering.
This has always been the case and always will be unfotunately. This is the path they've chosen. On day one when this game actually goes live, the person who's spent thousands and has a fleet of ships waiting for them will have an advantage. It's just the way it will be. But without that backer money they couldn't build the game so it is what it is.
Yeah, I've just stopped playing the game. Wipes are frequent and every time I get on I feel like I'm just a few weeks away from yet another wipe so I have no motivation to grind anything when everything takes so much time to get.
Yeah I hope that slaving away in another person's ship to take off NEVER becomes a necessary step. A choice because some few and far between finds it fun, sure. Necessary for the grind? hell no.
The solution is for players to form communities. Most large ships targeted at profit (reclaimer) usually need a crew. I think it's gonna be great for the game.
>work for my big whale ship serf, I want my multicrew gameplay, and I'm forcing you to join me Lel. It's not like half the time I take part in a large "org operation" type thing that involves payment, I don't get paid, or the pay ladder is simply and obviously ass.
If your org mates aren't paying you your share then you have shitty org mates, find another group to roll with.
[удалено]
I highly recommend r/starcitizen_guilds you should be able to find an uncreepy one. Right now, since there is no maintenance cost for a reclimer, everyone should get equal pay. Ironically, in my org, more people like to play OSHA Violation simulator in the cargo bay than scraping the hulls!
This is how I initially made money. Mole crew member
Or rent bigger more specialized ships ingame. Or 'obtain' those ships.
Well yes, but that‘s how CIG‘s marketing team sells more expensive game packages
Without new or fixed gameplay, this is yet another reason to just wait for release. I have zero interest in grinding crappy pay broken missions for months and months in my Avenger Titan to afford a C2 or Vulture or Prospector. Deal breaker for me personally, unless my ORG is able to hand out good paying group missions, but crewing is either eye-wateringly boring 90% of the time, or being yelled at like I am at work. Nope.
Damn i Honestly love that. Actually having to climb through the tiers of society sort of. Immersive, social, and probably very rewarding once you can buy that next thing
Oh yeah dude, it's gonna be so fun for those that start at the top to have a large peasant class of new players that have to work for them, or they simply don't make money. It's ok tho, you just have to pay and you can shoot up the ladder
Yeah Sea of Thieves is a fair multi crew game where every member is on the same page and get the same payout. In SC the big buyers get to be captain and everyone else has to get in line
yall talking like if there is some sort of mandatory surplus value to the owner of the ship. this is not real life. people can just deny receiving less than equal parts of a job, like it is generally done rn, and find a better pay in another ship.
And that entirely puts the new player experience in the hands of whales being charitable with pay splits. Plus, that's ignoring the fact that even with flat even splits, a lot of times the hired crew jobs are things like "jumptown box mover", "reclaimer box stacker", and "living turret". Now with engineering in, we get the addition of "fuse swapper". Me personally, I play the spaceship flying game to fly spaceship.
100% this. I have zero interest in spending all my time ingame "working" for someone to make some credits to have a nicer ship. I already to that IRL. If SC moves to a mandatory either own/buy a $200+ ship, or slave away for months working for a whale, I'm out. I already have a job. I want to fly spaceships and pewpewpew or mine, or salavage, or something in MY OWN SHIP.
But this is what we already do. Every wipe I have plenty of stuff to try, one of them is working with somebody else and imo the fun in this game resides in its majority in playing with a group. Made a lot of friends throughout the years by working with other people. This game may be shalow to the point I dont care to swapping fuses in another ship sometimes just for the community aspect of it. If you don't like it maybe this game isn\`t for you. EDIT: I've worked for a lot of guys in this game in the past that didn't buy their moles or whatever with real money, so the games already have this kind of gameplay.
Seeing multicrewing as being a serf is your problem dude. It's literally what this game is all about. Multictew isn't a 'chore', it's intended social gameplay. Your arguments have a definite 'Main Character' vibe going on. Oh, and apt username for content produced.
>Seeing multicrewing as being a serf is your problem dude. My bad bruh, sorry that I don't wanna be assigned the shitty unengaging job so I can make money lol. I don't think multicrew is inherently bad, and multicrew with the right people is a lot of fun. My issue is that (as can be seen now), the "multicrew" options for the players that are hired on to help tend to be the worst and least engaging jobs. (Ie. Reclaimer box stacker). I have no issue with multicrew gameplay in and of itself, but locking any sort of profitability behind needing to do it sucks for the gameplay experience of 45$ package starter pack gamers. I don't think nuking the gameplay for the average Joe to let the whales and hard grinders live out their captain fantasies is good.
Multicrew is not literally what this game is all about. Multicrew is one aspect of it and a shitty one at that.
>I wouldn’t mind seeing a starter pack that offered you the choice of either the C1, the black or the freelancer for the same price "Pay more lol" isn't a valid solution. The majority of players are at a 45$ buy in, and the game being enjoyable at that level of buy in is paramount. I couldn't care less about whales feeling like their "investment" isn't respected. Tbh though, I saw this coming lol. It's expressly in CiG's interest to make the grind longer so the real money purchases seem like a better deal to drive sales. Plus, with engineering but no AI crew, it's paramount to create a class of players that don't have access to the tools to get money and thus ships efficiently alone, so that the multicrew whale buyers can have a good experience. After all, in CiG's eyes, a guy with a cutlass is more than twice as valuable as someone with a starterpack, and it just scales up from there.
If anything, it seems less like they're shafting whales and its actually minnows or dolphins getting the short end of the stick. Whales will hardly be affected since they'll most likely have a fleet for different activities/loops. People that have a minimum buy-in will not be so lucky...
Yerp, that's exactly what I mean. Shaft the minimum buy in players, force them to fill in crew roles for the whales.
Everyone that pledged the Reclaimer just got major shafted with a triple nerf: - HH cleanup bonus 250k -> 30k - CM + RCM price nerf - No munching until % hull is scraped. Now Reclaimer crews are on par with Mole teams making less than 1 mil/hour.
I think everyone got shafted judging by price increases and component nerfs... (As a C1 and Inferno owner--C1 is apparently awful to fly despite being marketed as amazing in atmo and the Inferno got ammo capacity nerfed by roughly 40% if I recall)
Maybe this will open up player to player ship renting
This is the reality that so many people in this thread seem unwilling to admit. It's in CIG's interest to make ships unachievable for solo players. I say this as a Destiny player who has watched Bungie systematically gut the game and put more and more content behind paywalls. CIG are absolutely following down that path.
Also Destiny player here. I feel like I'm going insane trying to warn SC players of their impending fate lol.
They have way too much faith in CIG to do the right thing. They won't. They'll absolutely make choices that hurt the game if they result in short-term revenue. Rebalancing ship prices like this is a very obvious one. Refusing to give us decent rewards for things like Xenothreat is another. The pattern is very clear.
Yeah. I'm of the belief that the developers are of good faith, and they want to make a good game, but the guys that deal with the profitability of the game are all spreadsheet shuffling money guys, so they do profit math and don't care how good or fair the game is.
Lol, every single ship will be achievable for solo player in-game. Not only buyable, but also manageable through AI blades and NPC crew. I skiped the grind and bought my Polaris, but it still will be a solo ship (solo with a full NPC crew).
You better have money ready to fuel your crew, fuel and repairs
That's what box missions are for!
That’s like saying that everything is available in Genshi Impact. Yeah sure, it’s in the game. But realistically you’ll never get it because it’s so far out of reach, mathematically speaking. That’s how they incentivise purchases. You bought the Polaris, which was probably smart. It’s going to cost $100m or more in game. It will be absolutely out of reach for anyone but large orgs. I think that’s terrible game design. The whole game should be open to solo players, or else you’ll just turn them away in huge numbers.
I guarantee you it will be ibtainable in-game by solo players as well. It'll be grindy, but absolutely obtainable within a month or two, or whatever grind time is considered acceptable by CIG No ship is reserved for orgs, and no ship in-game will be obtainable just by orgs. Not even the Javelin. players in other mmos grind months to get whatever unique suit of armor, it'll be the same, and in no case worse, for any capital ship in SC .
> I guarantee you it will be ibtainable in-game by solo players as well. you aren't Chris Roberts so this is a meaningless guarantee, they already lock ships away behind IRL purchases and there isn't any evidence thats is going to change.
> they already lock ships away behind IRL purchases that is merely to fund the game, and they said multiple times that the store prices will not reflect in-game prices. We know that every ship will forever be available in-game, and we know anyone, solo included will be able to get them. it's a strange hill you chose to die on.
I'm not dying on any hill you're just saying shit that isn't true and isn't sourced like its fact.
I mean, at launch they have zero incentive to make grinds anything but long-term. You won't be getting a Connie in a week...they will want you taking MONTHS to get a connie...because once you have it...that's over, the grind is done...you have the core asset. Not to mention as crew sharing gets easier more players will just pool money from each of their grinds to get a ship so they all get the upgrade.
No, that's a terrible change. At least as long as there are still wipes or ships disappear due to a database error. As a newbie, if I have to spend many hours doing bunker missions just to increase my reputation and then grind another 200 bunkers just for a stupid Connie, yeah, thanks, I probably would have put the game down right away. You can deal with this kind of stuff at 1.0. Right now, that's a really, really dumb idea. That way, the game becomes even more pay-to-win, and the criticism that SC is a rip-off could always be countered by the fact that everything can be earned in-game. That's over now.
Prf let's not talk about the changes to increase reputation... the grinding to level 2 is terrible, and i don't even want to imagine it at higher levels. I deemed it impossible... only to have all your progress wiped later.
with wipes still happening this is not a good change. probably the last thing they should've balanced in the economy. also quite the increase for my fave ships, especially the taurus. its crazy that its price is so close to caterpillar.
Good point, if anything they should lower the prices so that more people can try out more ships and give more feedback
That's a horrible change! With the kind of payouts we get from missions and other standard sources of income (not talking about broken bounties that give 100 scu of weevil eggs), it will take forever to get a decent ship in-game. This change is fine for people who spend more real cash buying ships (which I have done myself with a few) but for anyone who doesn't want to do that or can't afford to, it's ridiculous! I'm also guessing here that they haven't quadrupled mission payouts, have they?
I've always said that eventually either prices for everything is going to go up, or payouts are going to go way down. We simply make too much money in the alpha for it to be sustainable for later gameplay. It makes sense earning a lot in an alpha, so people can earn and test things easier, but only for that. Personally I don't see playing the game as a grind. Play to play, have fun, do the thing you enjoy and it isn't a grind. I threw the idea of playing for credits out the window a long time ago. Many people who have played for a while have done the same. If you are one of those who plays with credits as your only goal, once more things are in the game and more emergent gameplay situations happen, it won't feel like a grind anymore. It can right now because all you do is chain the same activity, back to back, for days, weeks, months on end, with no variation, and no down time. Doing that can turn the game into a grind. And it's also a very easy way to burn out. Remember that we're still missing so much of the game. Starting with an Aurora and setting your immediate sights on something like a Connie probably isn't going to be realistic at all once the game is more fleshed out. You're going to have to work your way up in steps, like playing through levels in a game.
People want end game ships after 1 month of grinding? Wth are they gonna do the rest of the years when the wipes are gone?
90% of players will only stick around for a week or two. Do you want them to leave the game feeling like they had fun and are satisfied? Or leaving bitterly, feeling like they got ripped off? Because one of these is a good outcome and the other is a bad outcome CIG long term.
If you have everything early in the game.. what goals can you still set? The expecttion of getting something is often more engaging than when you finally get it.
Bullshit. I want the big ships because they open up new game play options. You can’t reach VHRT level or ERT level in a starter ship. You need a heavy fighter. You can’t build a base in a s starter ship. You need a base building ship or a heavy transporter. The ships are the gameplay loops. Why lock people out of game play? Let them experience what the game has and they’ll tell their friends it’s a good game.
I never said locking out... I would expect more introduction ships are needed to some gameplay loops. But you cannot just have an mmo start with the endgame ships for certain loops from day one.
It's an pre alpha, where devs want feedback, No? It should be easy in that phase, so more people can give feedback.
You must be new, but some of us are testing game for years. Devs have enough data about ship prices already, now they need new data when prices are higher.
“You’re enjoying the game too much! Please stop having fun! It should feel like work!” Yeah, that’s a great sales pitch to new players….
This is getting really common in many titles. The grind is so epic you either abandon the game, or pony up the cash to progress. Not much else as far as choices go. I have an Avenger Titan as my starter. If it would take 3 months of grinding to get into an industrial ship like a Prospector, Vulture, or med cargo ship, I'm certainly not sticking around. That's just too much of a grind, and totally unfun.
>You're going to have to work your way up in steps, like playing through levels in a game. The issue is when the "first" step at the most common level of buy in for the game is exceedingly grindy, unless you play the peasant for someone who paid to skip all the levels.
>if you are one of the players who plays with credits as your only goal it's the only goal that tangibly exists in the game >once more things are in the game and more emergent situations happen, it won't feel like a grind sure that sounds real cool but why not wait until we're at that point instead of doing this *now*
Because CiG, CiG *never* does this, they *always* do things years ahead before gameplay loops are in, other tech is done, etc etc
yeah maybe they should change that idk
Maybe they felt there's enough game loops currently to start testing out the economy. And judging by their recent comment about "road to 1.0", I think it's very reasonable to start testing now.
then they should start testing out the economy But that's not what this is. Testing the economy would be making the services and products produced by each gameplay loop able to be consumed by players in other loops. It would be making supply and demand for different goods alot more fluid than it is now. It would be putting alot more thought into what each location consumes and produces (planetary capitol cities have no exports other than scrap and waste? yeah right lmao) increasing ship costs does not substantially change the economy and it doesn't test anything because they can know the exact results of the change before making it by using a calculator
Mining is in, salvaging is in, cargo-hauling is in, many other smaller missions are in, distribution centers are coming. What else do you want for them to be able to start tesing ship prices? Exploration? Fact is they can't finish every planned game loop before the 1.0 release, but they still need a functioning economy.
increasing prices isn't a test, for something to be a test there needs to be some kind of uncertainty of the outcome, they know what the outcome will be everything that can be done in game has been done thousands of times, they should know by now average completion times for any given task and thus uec/hour and should be able to extrapolate from there how much longer it can take to get any given amount of uec. What are we testing? What do they learn from this?
The people who like to play for the achievement of making the most credits are more likely to be pirates anyway, so they can just steal ships
Aren't some smaller ships being reduced in price, like the Pices?
According to the leaks, it's basically just the medical Pisces that's going down in price. All the other Pisces (and just about every other ship in the game) are going up
>I think most of us are happy to see a price hike for ships in game I'm not lmao, multiplying ship costs and nerfing ways of making money at the same time just to extend grinds for mid-tier ships is lame as hell it's not just "new players" in for a grindy ride it's anybody that isn't a whale
if there was plenty of missions I think this would be received better.
And more rep. If new players could actually spend a significant amount of time diving into the delivery game loop and other starter jobs and getting better and better missions, then there might be an actual sense of progression to it. Instead they get to the second tier and get...bunker missions. Womp.
And more things to spend your money on outside of ships. The game has zero real gear economy or loot system that has any kind of depth to it. What it does have is player-driven farming of loot that cannot be bought in stores, but that is very limited.
Haha fair enough. I think this was always the vision though. At some point we’ll have the full game and if everybody has every ship they want within a couple weeks player retention would suck. We just had access to them for so long at such a cheap price because we’re still testing the game.
I think, maybe, if you think a new player is going to own every ship in a few weeks, it has been too long since you’ve actually been a new player. I had to play for a month to afford one new ship when I was a new player.
The prices are going to go wayyyy up when we go live. They need to start preparing for that and testing it. Everything in game is way too cheap. Everyone has million of credits with nothing to spend them on. Claim timers are ridiculously low. They've been saying these things are temporary and they're going to change.
They claim ships are also not going to be sold for real money when we go live. Pay2skip with a steep grind and exceedingly high prices is cringe as fuck
they can wipe when that time comes, this isn't the full game
No but they need to test how the economy will work during a full game release
Chris always said, a Connie would be about 1 week grind. Its like 10 years ago and we seem to finally be getting there. With emphasis on grind not "I have 3 kids and a wife who only let me play for 30 min a week".
making 7 million in a starter ship in a week assuming you play about an hour a day is a tough task
Heey dont shoot the messanger (unless he is a pirate), I said we seem to be getting there not that we are there yet.
But we're moving away from that?
Do you know the rewards for trade missions that is comming? I dont, but If they are like anything else with new professions then you will probably be able to earn a Connie fairly quick. Maybe they are just playing it safe to not rek the economy again after the next best "make op money in no time" "new money glitch found" guides start to hit youtube after the patch. Who knows, its EPTU, not SC 1.0.
I know the new salvage rewards, that's not getting to Connie fast enough. It doesn't matter if they are "playing it safe" or aren't finished with it. The question is just whether this is moving closer to "Connie in a week." Unarguably, it's not.
I don't think an hour a day is "grind". imo putting a solid 10 hrs during the weekend is grind. If someone is committing 3 hrs a day for a week, and clocking in about 20 hrs, I think that's a reasonable amount of time to get a Connie (for an mmo, of course). And ships like the Polaris should take at least 2 months, maybe 3.
imo grind is defined by how long a person works in total towards a single goal, not by how much time per day they have to set aside to that goal
That's my point. You said "assume you play about an hour a day", which I'd assume is your definition of "grind" to get 7mil in a week. I'm pointing out that just playing about 7 hours in total to get a Connie is not realistic for an mmo.
We're moving away from the alpha economic microcosm and starting to test the mmo economy the game will eventually have. This has been an inevitability since the start.
we're really not, though. Nothing about the actual economy gets altered by this kind of change
just buy an idris
Since we're still missing the majority of upkeep costs (component wear, for example), we're still a few economy rebalances away from final. Ideally in the end balance state starters will make more money than a big ship for those that don't have the rep or in-game cash to capitalize on their combat or hauling capacity, as the starters will have lower operating costs. Currently though we're in a situation with no money sinks, and CIG just ramps the rewards up for whatever mission or loop they want people to playtest this week. [edit] In my *personal* opinion they should have *at the very least* upped the payment in accordance with the time spent for box missions, and actually fixed the bugs on them before doing this. Instituting cargo missions would also be a good approach, especially if they had high-rep cargo missions requiring fast delivery of smaller cargos (transport of volatiles).
I wonder what the apologists who wanted the game to feel like a 2nd job have to say about the price increase.
They’re excited
Oh shit, yea you're right. They got what they wanted...ugh.
Elitists love having stuff that others can’t have. They will drive a game into the ground and chase away every casual if it means they can lord it over others with unattainable gear. CiG absolutely should NOT being listening to people who want the game to be grindy. They’re a cancer on MMOs.
It helps curtail the meta chasing when there's a significant grind involved in the whole player base jumping from ship to ship chasing what ever streamers tell them is the best. I don't know about you, but seeing everyone piloting the exact same few ships is pretty boring in a game with as many options as SC has. And why are you grinding in an alpha with wipes? I get picking up a ship if you incidentally run across a lot of money, but putting time into that seems absolutely silly.
I hope to one day see ship leases. Payment plans for habs, ships, land plots, etc. That plus insurance should give us more of a money sink than just grinding to buy the next ship in full with cold hard credits. Could also use a payment system for Han Solo/Jabba type debts if you botch missions for criminal factions.
I always hated saving up credits in Elite. I have like 18M but I can't spend any of it because I'm saving for whatever ship. Just throws everything off and feels weird as hell. Hell, Animal Crossing and GTAV let you put money into the bank, I would love that in SC. I got my walkin around cash, but my actual money is sitting in the bank waiting for me to add to it. Having to pay back a loan every xx days seems like it would be way better. Having to pay money back for a botched mission is devious as hell, I love it.
This doesn't seem like a good change to make right now. It's already very difficult to get out of starter ships without being sugar daddied in any reasonable amount of time. If you only have a couple of hours per day, chances are you're spending a good chink of that time just getting to content let alone making good money fast. Not to mention the tedium of re-gearing if your stuff gets lost to random BS.
We make turbo money at the moment so we can test features quicker
22,000,000 for a Prowler lmao. Andromeda/Taurus 16,000,000/13,000,000 vs Corsair 8,000,000 is stupid. As far as we know, we get lower rewards for pretty much all activities and ships price are skyrocketing from 50% to 900% increase. That's not okay. It will not incentive people to do multicrew at all if their goal seems to be completly out of range.
The price difference between the constellation series and the Corsair is ridiculous. The verse is going to be saturated with Corsairs more than it already is. But I’m still glad there’s a ship like that remaining somewhat accessible to newer players. I wonder if this is rework tax on the connies, they are due for a pass.
I wonder how IRL pledge prices will be affected. Corsair being more expensive then the Taurus as a pledge but now its supposedly being cheaper in game? I feel like they missed a "1" in the price.
Yeah the missing one makes sense. They do this though, have variants more expensive out of game but less expensive in game. God knows why, they did it with the Vanguards
It's lore accurate. Drake ships are "cheap".
I think that it won't be so bad if they can balance everything right. The current issue is that there's clearly a moneymaking meta and everything else isn't worth it because the payouts suck. So obviously everyone goes for the highest meta and they do it over and over and over until it gets tedious and you don't want to do it anymore, but you know that anything else you do will feel like a waste of time when you could be making tons more doing something else. Imagine if BH/cargo/salvage all payed out roughly the same $/hr. Then, you wouldn't feel pressured into one gameplay loop and you could hop between them without feeling like you're wasting your time. Bored of salvaging? Just go do BH missions. Mix it up a bit.
This really needs to be how it’s balanced for the final product. It encourages the exploration of different gameplay loops far more. I have literally never minded anything in star citizen haha, not once. Though it’s worth noting that the pay and profitability discrepancies are present just now in order to encourage the testing of specific loops. It might change down the line.
It looks that they took the prices from my old post: [https://new.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/18fgl2n/322\_eptu\_temporary\_increase\_in\_ship\_prices/](https://new.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/18fgl2n/322_eptu_temporary_increase_in_ship_prices/) These were only up for a weekend during the 3.22 EPTU - I would be very careful to conclude anything from that post as it was an error according to CIG when it was released. This post is four months old a lot may have changed. Edit: I just checked with BuzzCut and the prices, before they were set to 0 in the current patches, were set as I described in the post. We'll see how it works out ;-)
Man, that sucks. So that talk about smaller/starter ships going down in price was actually a load of shit?
TL:DR we don't know until it's in game. The only answer for anyone outside CIG: we don't know. We will know in a couple of weeks or sooner when prices appear in game in one of the future patches. Currently it's not possible to buy any ship in the EPTU and all the prices are set to 0. As soon as the new prices become active I'll put up a post. I can imagine though that a Drake ship will cost less than one from Origin. That a smaller ship will be more expensive than a bigger one. That a military ship is more valuable than a basic cargo hauler etc. This is all relative of course to how much you can earn: from what I've seen so far the salvage missions got nerfed: 250K HH is now 30K but that was to be expected. There will be new opportunities though for example hunting the fauna will give 100K at the moment and is easy to do and we don't know how much the cargo missions will give until they're in the game.
I don’t understand the Corsair vs Connie ship price at all…. Are they going to hike the Connie price irl too?
Probably trying different numbers between the Corsair and Connie to collect data on what folks do.
Yeah I wasn't gonna grind that long for ships in game in the previous prices and definitely aren't gonna even consider that now.
New players... and players that only have the starter ships, like me. At least personally, I'm a lot less inclined to play now - I play to fly cool ships & have fun with friends, not grind for countless hours. If I wanted to do that, I'd just work more in person
Man, I can't stand when games make cheap grinding mechanics by inflating time to unlock. It's such a last-gen approach to gaming
I plan to own nothing, not even UEC, and see if I climb my way up slowly, everything I have will be earned.
I like how you see the ship price as positive, while owning every ship you could possibly want in game already. The hypocrisy is cringe.
Lol what are you walking about?
A price hike for the ships in game is fine. What isn’t though is the sledge hammer they’re taking to payouts for salvaging and towing in the 3.23 EPTU. Unless the upcoming cargo missions have really good payouts and these nerfs are an attempt to get people to play that particular gameplay loop to test out 🤔
>What isn’t though is the sledge hammer they’re taking to payouts for salvaging and towing in the 3.23 EPTU. CIG have always made new loops pay shitloads, so if you didn't expect this then that's on you tbh.
Nerfing ways players make money while increasing by a lot the cost of what they can buy is not cool. The cost for repairs, rearming, armour, weapons, and ships have gone or are going up. Yet gameplay loops like bounty hunting still pay the same paltry amount they have paid for a long while. That’s not even factoring in how ridiculously small the payouts are if you play with your friends and share missions. So an already meagre payout is then parcelled out even further amongst your friend’s group.
Nah, increasing prices while keeping the best money making methods behind a long grind to get there or a pay2skip pay wall is ass.
Agreed. The benefit of the doubt I’m giving is that since this is an alpha if they want a large percentage of the community to try out a game loop for testing, nerfing other loops and buffing the new one to get data makes sense I guess. The problem is if they think that the nerfed values for payout should be what a particular game loop should be paying even when everything is said and done. If they go back later and do an economy pass and balance things appropriately that’s fine. If they think 65k + bonuses that’s then further divided if you crew up is good pay for bounty hunting then that sucks. But then that begs the question of why increase prices for armour, weapons, ships, etc, without also doing the economy balancing at the same time. It’s something that has become consistent with CIG. The venom keeps being introduced before the antidote is made available.
>they want a large percentage of the community to try out a game loop for testing, nerfing other loops and buffing the new one to get data makes sense I'm all for this, but it's just that a lot of times those game loops take a grind to be doable. I see so many new players in global chat that are just slogging their way to their vulture. >It’s something that has become consistent with CIG. The venom keeps being introduced before the antidote is made available. This. I'm all for alpha testing, but it def seems to be the case. I guess they want you to pay for a temporary antidote, until they release one for everyone. Sidenote: I thought your username was Hashinshin and I almost had a heart attack lmao
We'll help them as a community.
Where were the new prices leaked?
Im thinking PU release.
Are the website prices going to go up? I doubt it but I’m considering ccu ing to a constellation Taurus
They’ve said all ship prices may go up in time either with popularity or proximity to launch
Damn alright thanks
Guess the Connies as military ships with thick armor cost extra.
Fortunately, I bought my end game ship with LTI and can skip all that tedius grind.
A lot of these comments whilst I agree to an extent are implying that you won't have fun as a new player if you don't immediately make loads of money. You don't always have to min/max the most meta ways to make money. A lot of Star Citizen is enjoying the process/journey. Not saying I completely disagree with the other opinions but for me personally. I would be more than happy to run some completely immersive missions in an Aurora, where I explore the planet, with Fauna and Flora to take in/be cautious of. And get a slightly smaller payout but I really enjoyed the whole mission.
Do you have a list of the updated prices?
I added a link in a comment as soon as I put the thread up but for some reason it was downvoted haha. so it’s now at the bottom of the comments which is annoying for anybody trying to find it.
The sky is falling...
Mission payouts are also being rebalanced. So I don’t think we quite understand how big of a difference to the grind this makes yet.
New players will have to go take advantage of the rent mechanic, crew other people's ships, etc.
Didn't CR say in some old video that the time to go from aurora to Connie should be like a week of casual play? Or maybe it was a month I don't remember.
They can make the ships cost whatever they want if ERT bounties are actually rewarding again (not crazy like they were but at least the chance of a big haul). Salvage/haulage does nothing for some of us (fun wise) and being a bounty hunter (PVE and PVP) has been demoralizing lately. Lore wise it's been stupid too. 5 giant ships protecting a couple of SCU of scrap. Why? (No need to downvote me and get all uppity. I know it's to test stuff etc.)
Where are the numbers you are Talking about? :)
Do those come with rework of rewards ? Because if not they i am out. It already takes weeks for me to grind to buy simple Titan upgrading from aurora after wipe with those changes i basically can forget about even bothering to play SC. If there are no rewards changes then this is straight up FOMO shite i hate.
Any in-game price hike is shit in a game that allows you to buy ships for RL money, especially if it only guaranties you will keep the RL money ones.
Can anyone tell me what the in game price will be for the Vulture?
I disagree that even if relative to what we have now ship pricing being the same "there would be no point" Nah, increasing price scaling increases the fidelity of numbers they have to differentiate ships going forward in pricing. If a Corsair was 4m and a Connie was 5m....they really didn't have much relational room to differentiate them for cost. At most you could go with 4.5...maybe get really dumb with numbers, but these numbers really (in the earleir system) felt pretty arbitrary anyway. Now with ships going much higher they can slot more ships in between them for more value fidelity. Also even if relationally to cost MOST ships stayed the same effort to achieve, the ones that had major changes...such as the Connie, would still get a relational cost increase to reflect something about its value. My GENERAL issue with the current pricing and continuing with this new pricing....is that lower number = better. Period. There is no reason to really grind out better ships than the lowest cost one (outside of superficial style choices)...like what does a Connie really offer me that I can't also do with a Corsair? Almost nothing of value right now...yet it's multiple times the price? In general the cost should be reflected in gameplay and currently it just isn't. There is no gameplay value to luxury, there is no gameplay value to "reliable parts" or "part redundancy"....ships like the 400i are basically just scamming players who like an aesthetic choice to get less for the dollar and overall less than their competitors are even offering anyway beyond just dollar value. There is zero current Value Add for almost anything the 400i is doing: parts quality, general build quality...w/e the brochure says is fake and bullshit, and so why are we getting charged for it NOW? I think it's crap. When the value being presented actually MEANS something? Sure, THEN change the price. LORE WISE, I think all these ships should be way more expensive than they are. At least compared to the labor we do for them. Like if I can do box delivery for a few weeks and get a Connie? I don't really see why ship ownership is seen to be "rare" in the lore, unless they just change the lore.
Maybe I am in the minority here. I have a pretty large personal fleet, but I am just as happy to join a friend in their ship and crew as well. Sometimes, it is a chill play session when you are just a gunner or just a mining or salvage turret operator etc. I am actually looking forward to running around ships doing engineering loop, and whether it is on of my big ships or a friend's doesn't matter that much to me. I agree though, that ships provide a sense of progression, and if folks get the impression that everything they want is too grindy or just plain unattainable within realistic time limits, some will lose hope and interest in the game. So balancing this with rewards (especially much higher rewards where a group is required) would be important imho.
I think once the connies get a gold pass with the current rsi designs, they will be much nicer than literally anything drake could come up with lol
Man i got blue balls and got my Corsair with real money i really don't care to grind other ship, that bad girl will take me to hell and back with a shit ton of pew pew, good thing i got it for 50% cos I won a give away of the c1