About Those Ship Prices....

rpmcmurphy

Disclaimer: Obviously numbers are subject to change but CIG have repeatedly shown that ships are high value assets and income is low value, the suggested in-game price for the Polaris as an example (25m-30m UEC), CR talking about hard and fast ramp up for ship cost etc and at the opposite end, the low amount one earns for trading/mining etc in the PU.

Towards the end of the stream they visited a ship dealer on Hurston where we got to see in-game prices for a few ships. The cost and time involved based on the mission they had just undertaken made those prices seem extortionate, ie 4000 UEC for an hour long mission with an upper mid-range ship costing 21.5 million UEC (so over 5000 hours to obtain at that UEC p/hr ratio).

These numbers are based on income being 2.5x higher than what was obtained in the demo

• Aegis Hammerhead: 21.4 million UEC, this $650 ship now costs $21,429 in game, will take 2143 hours to earn which is almost 2 years at 3 hours per night.
• MISC Prospector: 1.6 million UEC, this $155 ship now costs $1620 in game and will take 162 hrs, almost 2 months at 3 hours per night.
• Origin 85X: 616,000, this $50 ship now costs $616 in game and takes 62 hours, almost 3 weeks at 3hr p/night.
• Aurora LX: 220,900, this $30 ship now costs $220 in game and takes 22 hours, about 1 week at 3hr p/night.

The question then, is how long will it take to earn a $1000, a $1500 or a $2500 spaceship?

My concern is that this will just push people away from the game, not only will it create a mega-disparity between those that have bought ships and those that haven't but it will also make grindy F2P games look like an absolute breeze, it is masochism on a whole new level.

When Elite started it would take about 2-3 weeks to earn the top end ship and people found that way too intensive. Once you had the hull you then needed to A-grade the modules which could quadruple the value of your ship. SC will be doing something similar, are people really going to spend 6000 hours maxing out their ships? That's almost 6 years maxing out a single $650 ship...

I can understand that CIG need to give wallet warriors value for their money but do they only want wallet warriors playing the game?

Babuinix

If this #concerns you should definitely stay away from the game.

For the record, a new player can fly any ship without having to buy/grind them, you can board other players, you can steal ships or you can simply serve as crewman. Depending on your social network and overall diplomatic skills the limits are thin.

The benefits of being an actual player and not a vehicle, having ships fully modelled inside out and a game made with space legs in mind from the get go.

MaxBacon

Well it's rather obvious that, the content earning rates will have huge jumps as more content gets in, at this moment the game only has starter content, and little at that, so the earning oportunities are few, so what feels too much now is not too much as content gets expanded.

But in your whole post, you don't mention renting once, and this is what the dev responded on the Angry Joe interview: 
On the 2nd part with Tony, the timestamp is around 20:13

As you can rent ships, you can engage into higher tiers of earning, say renting a bigger cargo shjp = bigger trade runs = more earning, of course renting will likely impose things like "you can't upgrade/customize components", but it already frees up the grind bar, WHILE keeping the ownership of the ship itself attractive.

So this is not a huge issue because of both mechanics of ownership and renting co-existing, it will not be a face-on "you have to grind forever to get this expensive ship". 

About ships like the Hammerhead, as it was stated before, the capital ships are meant for guilds to work together to obtain, not for solo players, and the cost gap of many millions shows it.

And I do think that the game won't balance capital ships for solo players to earn alone, otherwise, the guilds would be able to earn capital ships too easily. Wouldn't you agree?

rpmcmurphy

Babuinix said:

If this #concerns you should definitely stay away from the game.

This is such an ignorant and irrelevant thing to say.

Babuinix said:

For the record, a new player can fly any ship without having to buy/grind them, you can board other players, you can steal ships or you can simply serve as crewman. Depending on your social network and overall diplomatic skills the limits are thin.

You can steal a ship for the session, you cannot keep it and there are lots of restrictions during that session. Are you really proposing that people should be floor scrubbers on some wallet warriors penis substitute if they don't want to buy spaceships?

Babuinix said:

The benefits of being an actual player and not a vehicle, having ships fully modelled inside out and a game made with space legs in mind from the get go.

And yet more stupidity and irrelevance. You're on a roll Babs..

rpmcmurphy

MaxBacon said:

Well it's rather obvious that, the content earning rates will have huge jumps as more content gets in, at this moment the game only has starter content, and little at that, so the earning oportunities are few, so what feels too much now is not too much as content gets expanded.

But in your whole post, you don't mention renting once, and this is what the dev responded on the Angry Joe interview: 
On the 2nd part with Tony, the timestamp is around 20:13

As you can rent ships, you can engage into higher tiers of earning, say renting a bigger cargo shjp = bigger trade runs = more earning, of course renting will likely impose things like "you can't upgrade/customize components", but it already frees up the grind bar, WHILE keeping the ownership of the ship itself attractive.

I had not seen the bit about renting hence why it wasn't included. I don't believe it will be some magic fix for the cost disparity though. Even if you were earning 10x the demo's income it would still take half a year to obtain $650 spaceship (and let's not forget that's just the hull). People want to own things, not feel like they're leasing them out in my opinion, it's fine to try out ships but certainly not for long term usage.

MaxBacon said:

So this is not a huge issue because of both mechanics of ownership and renting co-existing, it will not be a face-on "you have to grind forever to get this expensive ship".

That sounds like a factual statement when really it's just opinion. I fully agree (as per my disclaimer) that things are not set in stone, however we can only work with what CIG have shown and then amend as more information becomes available

MaxBacon said:

About ships like the Hammerhead, as it was stated before, the capital ships are meant for guilds to work together to obtain, not for solo players, and the cost gap of many millions shows it.

And I do think that the game won't balance capital ships for solo players to earn alone, otherwise, the guilds would be able to earn capital ships too easily. Wouldn't you agree?

But that doesn't stop CIG selling them to solo players so why should they be out of bounds for solo players to earn ? Why can't a player stick a bunch of NPCs on the Hammerhead's turrets and pilot the ship themself even if it means a hit in capability?

They should be catering for all styles of gameplay rather than funneling people towards particular ones.

MaxBacon

rpmcmurphy said:

I had not seen the bit about renting hence why it wasn't included. I don't believe it will be some magic fix for the cost disparity though. Even if you were earning 10x the demo's income it would still take half a year to obtain $650 spaceship (and let's not forget that's just the hull). People want to own things, not feel like they're leasing them out in my opinion, it's fine to try out ships but certainly not for long term usage.

But that is exactly the thing, we as players, want the OWN the thing, want to customize to upgrade to do all that, what renting is allowing here is playing with ships you can't afford, earning more currency with that, and eventually buy the ship, without that mechanic is where if you have a starter ship you are met with an imposing grind bar forcing you to play with that ship because you can't have any other for how long it takes you buy another, so this mechanic is even a thing to mitigate that and keep value on ship ownership.

rpmcmurphy said:

That sounds like a factual statement when really it's just opinion. I fully agree (as per my disclaimer) that things are not set in stone, however we can only work with what CIG have shown and then amend as more information becomes available

It is one opinion based on what we know, but for some reason, the renting mechanic even exists on the design, the direction was very to what now is much clearer, ships are to be valuable against the game earning rates, BUT to ease up on how imposing grind will be (such as not force you to play with X ship for weeks or months just to buy another), allowing the ability to play with new ships without owning them. From what Tony and such described, the design does make sense, the execution will be what happens next as Hurston now releasing with the ownership bit first.

rpmcmurphy said:

But that doesn't stop CIG selling them to solo players so why should they be out of bounds for solo players to earn ? Why can't a player stick a bunch of NPCs on the Hammerhead's turrets and pilot the ship themself even if it means a hit in capability?

They should be catering for all styles of gameplay rather than funneling people towards particular ones.

Well that is the pledges as we know, but even those who buy, a lot of those people I know are building up their own guild fleets, the NPC crews are meant to be there on the solo player crewed ship, and on the multi-crew player crewed ship from what is mentioned, but the devs are conservative on ever saying the AI will ever be as good or better than players, it's because a player crew can far more effective and dynamic than an AI with scripted behaviors and I think a lot of people already got the message, you can but "not as effective".

I do think that capitals must be guild play, if you put yourself on the designer eyes, and you want guilds to work together for something, then you want them to work for capitals, if you ever make the earning rates so solo players could earn capitals, guilds would easily burn through the grind bar and devalue what you want to be valuable and hard to get (it won't be fair to solo players either way).

rpmcmurphy

Max, all of this is diverting from the point at hand. The fact of the matter is that the prices proposed are absurd based on the income shown and that should be a concern to everyone if they want the game to have a healthy player base.

We can shoot the shit all day long about rentals, AI and all the rest of it but we have absolutely zero information on how those things will work or the costs involved.

The only thing we do know is what we saw in the demo, so that is all that we can sensibly discuss. Anything else is watering down the topic.

MaxBacon

rpmcmurphy said:

Max, all of this is diverting from the point at hand. The fact of the matter is that the prices proposed are absurd based on the income shown and that should be a concern to everyone if they want the game to have a healthy player base.

We can shoot the shit all day long about rentals, AI and all the rest of it but we have absolutely zero information on how those things will work or the costs involved.

The only thing we do know is what we saw in the demo, so that is all that we can sensibly discuss. Anything else is watering down the topic.

It's not diverting because it's directly related, without considering the renting on the core design for how they want this all to work, the whole picture is different.

Now it gets quite clear they want the ownership of ships to be valuable against the earning rates, the capital ships to be earned by guilds and the renting system to allow players to play with different ships without a massive of grind while keeping the players want to own the ship (so they'll grind for it anyway just with more freedom).

So if you want to discuss only what the numbers that appeared on the demo, you can, but only by ignoring the whole picture as this all ties together into what economy and progression will be.


Also your bit on the pirates ship only last for the session, when that was mentioned and there was quite the strong feedback on it, they brought it back on design, but it's much harsher if you watch the whole interview he also describes on more detail, you can play with it, due to it marked as stolen your life will be much harder (they're likely trying to push into into scrap the ship or something to sell instead of injecting a sorts of "free ship generation system" into the insurance mechanic one they get stolen).

Octagon7711

Too soon to say as a lot of pricing will have to be worked out when balancing the game. It's rare a company will stick to it's guns when there's an obvious problem with pricing and hardly anyone is buying ingame ships.  As of now most ships aren't finished and there are little to no content in place for a lot of the specialty ships. Perhaps payouts for missions will be adjusted.

I have to smile when I see people saying, well then this isn't the game for you, because one, there is no launched game yet, and two telling people the game isn't for them during alpha when the game isn't finished is questionable to say the least.  That's making a big assumption that what's being planned will actually be in the game exactly as written.  I'm sure the early backers can tell you it ain't so.

I feel this way about any game that's still in alpha or early beta as a game can change a lot before launch and a lot of games are still being completed for years afterwards.  

Vrika

Xodic said:

I don't believe that large ships should be reasonably obtainable without large group participation. I don't think that smaller military grade ships should be reasonably obtainable outside of a group funding effort. For me it all comes down to how that effects the game play, either as a solo player, or part of a large organization.

That ship has sailed long ago. Now it's not a question whether single players should be able to obtain those ships, it's a question whether they should be able to only buy them through cash shop or also obtain them through gameplay.

MaxBacon

Vrika said:

Xodic said:

I don't believe that large ships should be reasonably obtainable without large group participation. I don't think that smaller military grade ships should be reasonably obtainable outside of a group funding effort. For me it all comes down to how that effects the game play, either as a solo player, or part of a large organization.

That train has passed long ago. Now it's not a question whether single players should be able to obtain those ships, it's a question whether they should be able to only buy them through cash shop or also obtain them through gameplay.

That question does not exist, they are to be obtained by in-game, either someone buys currency or not it's up to them. Also as I mentioned, if you actually see the interview, the renting system is what allows players to play with ships they don't own, keeping the ships valuable but not imposing mad grind bars.

Capital ships make sense to not be obtained by solo players, where does this makes any sense? Make capitals obtainable by solo players, guilds will be able to get like what, dozens of capital ships easily just by member contributions? The valuation will be ruined and the game will no hard progression for guilds.

Game has not to only be balanced against solo players, it has to be balanced for guilds of players too, if you consider how much money will guilds be able to gather through member contributions, they'll surely be a "ship spawning hub" for the game, and with insurances and such permanent ownership is default for them to maintain.

When you think on the whole picture, I think you can understand why they MUST be expensive, or they have to be easy to lose (and the later is the ship that already sailed).

rpmcmurphy

Octagon7711 said:

Too soon to say as a lot of pricing will have to be worked out when balancing the game. It's rare a company will stick to it's guns when there's an obvious problem with pricing and hardly anyone is buying ingame ships.  As of now most ships aren't finished and there are little to no content in place for a lot of the specialty ships. Perhaps payouts for missions will be adjusted.

I have to smile when I see people saying, well then this isn't the game for you, because one, there is no launched game yet, and two telling people the game isn't for them during alpha when the game isn't finished is questionable to say the least.  That's making a big assumption that what's being planned will actually be in the game exactly as written.  I'm sure the early backers can tell you it ain't so.

I feel this way about any game that's still in alpha or early beta as a game can change a lot before launch and a lot of games are still being completed for years afterwards.  

I can't disagree, it's clear that a lot of people were shocked at the pricing and what it would imply so hopefully it does get changed. It does concern me a bit though because they've been running with this significant increase in pricing for a couple of years now...

If I was to go all conspiracy-like, I would propose that these high prices were shown for a reason, ie "look how much you're going to pay in game if you don't buy now, get your ships at a 'bargain' price while you can..."

As for Babs, a while ago he was complaining that all topics were just haters trolling, as soon as a non-trolling discussion is started he's the one that starts trolling...

SpottyGekko

I think it's extremely unlikely that the numbers shown in that demo represent the final numbers for launch.

They do send a clear message though, buying ships with ingame currency is not going to be trivial.

There may also be a hidden message there, something like "Buy it now with real money while you still can !"

NorseGod

SpottyGekko said:

I think it's extremely unlikely that the numbers shown in that demo represent the final numbers for launch.

They do send a clear message though, buying ships with ingame currency is not going to be trivial.

There may also be a hidden message there, something like "Buy it now with real money while you still can !"

I agree with you.

Where to start?

First, I'm not taking any sides but, I think it's just too early to discuss this topic.

Buying ships in game is the gear treadmill. Releasing new powerful ships in order to beat New powerful missions (DLC/Expansion), will be the power creep.

Secondly, I initially planned to buy a decent starter ship (I got the Cutlass Black) and a money-maker ship (hauler for sure, which one depends on CIG).

However, I saw high in-game prices coming and decided that I would upgrade it all into bigger more expensive ships for the very same purpose of this topic. I already saw this coming.

The problem recently has been that CIG has yet to prove gimmicks they create to sell ships, actually work.

Lately, I have doubts they can make modules work on a Cat, spindles work on the Hull Series, AI to man turrets, etc. There is zero proof that these gimmicks work. Zero (at least we have a broken FOIP).

So the current plan is to do nothing but wait. IF CIG can release a game with the features they make-up during interviews (lol), I'll pull the trigger on large purchases on the last ship sale before launch. Until then, no way.

Your points are valid and should be considered by all players.

Babuinix

rpmcmurphy said:

This is such an ignorant and irrelevant thing to say.

And yet more stupidity and irrelevance.

You just described your whole post in 2 sentences lol

You're on a roll...

rpmcmurphy

Babuinix said:

rpmcmurphy said:

This is such an ignorant and irrelevant thing to say.

And yet more stupidity and irrelevance.

You just described your whole post in 2 sentences lol

You're on a roll...

Oh ho ho ho, the edgy teenager strikes back...

Get along with you Babs, go and do your homework or some shit.

Erillion

Too early to say ... all prices and all earning rates subject to change.

Buying a large ship should be HARD. These are multiplayer ships for up to 25 players. That means 25 players work together to get this ship. If we take a large ship costing 22ish million UEC, that boils down to approx. 86 hours of in-game-cash-earning  per crew member (of a crew of 25).  That is about a month per crew member to get that ship.

Yes, one can get a big ship solo. One can fly one solo. One will quickly die when flying one solo, losing the ship quickly to boarders IMHO.

Have fun

NorseGod

Erillion said:

Too early to say ... all prices and all earning rates subject to change.

Buying a large ship should be HARD. These are multiplayer ships for up to 25 players. That means 25 players work together to get this ship. If we take a large ship costing 22ish million UEC, that boils down to approx. 86 hours of in-game-cash-earning  per crew member (of a crew of 25).  That is about a month per crew member to get that ship.

Yes, one can get a big ship solo. One can fly one solo. One will quickly die when flying one solo, losing the ship quickly to boarders IMHO.

Have fun

Fun fact.

25 players is exactly one half of the possible server population.

rpmcmurphy

Erillion said:

Too early to say ... all prices and all earning rates subject to change.

Buying a large ship should be HARD. These are multiplayer ships for up to 25 players. That means 25 players work together to get this ship. If we take a large ship costing 22ish million UEC, that boils down to approx. 86 hours of in-game-cash-earning  per crew member (of a crew of 25).  That is about a month per crew member to get that ship.

Yes, one can get a big ship solo. One can fly one solo. One will quickly die when flying one solo, losing the ship quickly to boarders IMHO.

Have fun

You'd struggle having a 25 man crew on the Hammerhead, it has a crew size of 3 to 9 people.

238 hours per person with max crew size or 714 hours per person for minimum crew size. Then you run into ownership issues and all the usual guild drama.

I agree that bigger ships should take longer to obtain, that's just your usual progression gameplay but the numbers indicated take it way too far in my opinion.

Babuinix

rpmcmurphy said:

Babuinix said:

rpmcmurphy said:

This is such an ignorant and irrelevant thing to say.

And yet more stupidity and irrelevance.

You just described your whole post in 2 sentences lol

You're on a roll...

Oh ho ho ho, the edgy teenager strikes back...

Now you did it in just one lol
Definitely on a roll... 

#spottygekko said it all bellow so no need to expand on why it's premature premature to concern about economy and grind based on that demo.

SpottyGekko

rpmcmurphy said:
...

I agree that bigger ships should take longer to obtain, that's just your usual progression gameplay but the numbers indicated take it way too far in my opinion.

It's possible that the numbers shown in the demo were deliberately used to encourage ship sales before launch.

It's also possible that the mission shown in the demo is low-level and therefore had a very low payout. It certainly wasn't a "hard" mission, 90% of it felt like travel time...

Very little can really be deduced regarding actual post-launch game play, because we don't know the costs of things like ship rentals yet. Those kinds of features could potentially have a significant effect on a player's earning rate in the game, because it gives them access to considerably more combat power than they could hope to "own" with limited funds.

Erillion

NorseGod said:

Erillion said:

Too early to say ... all prices and all earning rates subject to change.

Buying a large ship should be HARD. These are multiplayer ships for up to 25 players. That means 25 players work together to get this ship. If we take a large ship costing 22ish million UEC, that boils down to approx. 86 hours of in-game-cash-earning  per crew member (of a crew of 25).  That is about a month per crew member to get that ship.

Yes, one can get a big ship solo. One can fly one solo. One will quickly die when flying one solo, losing the ship quickly to boarders IMHO.

Have fun

Fun fact.

25 players is exactly one half of the possible server population.

Fun fact

Star Citizen is a game based on interlaced instances. You find plenty of explanations of that on YouTube. I think you should watch them.

You do not speak about "server populations". You speak about the population of one "instance". Currently one instance can have 50 people ... and the number is constantly going up.

One ship can be one instance.

But these instances are interlaced. So essentially the SERVER population can be near infinite, as much as the Amazon backbone servers can handle ( A LOT i guess). With the server being full of instances, which contain instances, which themselves contain instances etc.

Have fun

NorseGod

Erillion said:

NorseGod said:

Erillion said:

Too early to say ... all prices and all earning rates subject to change.

Buying a large ship should be HARD. These are multiplayer ships for up to 25 players. That means 25 players work together to get this ship. If we take a large ship costing 22ish million UEC, that boils down to approx. 86 hours of in-game-cash-earning  per crew member (of a crew of 25).  That is about a month per crew member to get that ship.

Yes, one can get a big ship solo. One can fly one solo. One will quickly die when flying one solo, losing the ship quickly to boarders IMHO.

Have fun

Fun fact.

25 players is exactly one half of the possible server population.

Fun fact

Star Citizen is a game based on interlaced instances. You find plenty of explanations of that on YouTube. I think you should watch them.

You do not speak about "server populations". You speak about the population of one "instance". Currently one instance can have 50 people ... and the number is constantly going up.

One ship can be one instance.

But these instances are interlaced. So essentially the SERVER population can be near infinite, as much as the Amazon backbone servers can handle ( A LOT i guess). With the server being full of instances, which contain instances, which themselves contain instances etc.

Have fun

OK, 50 people per instance. My 50 man org will never log off in our instance. All resources belong to us. lol

Kefo

Imagine the fun when the person who owns the gigantic ship doesn’t log on for whatever the org is doing, or they quit the game, or they just decide “fuck it, the ship is mine now”. The tears will be amazing

MaxBacon

Kefo said:

Imagine the fun when the person who owns the gigantic ship doesn’t log on for whatever the org is doing, or they quit the game, or they just decide “fuck it, the ship is mine now”. The tears will be amazing

Orgs have fleets, so if they want capitals to e for guilds to work for, then it rather implies there needs to be a system that is beyond just X person owns only X person can spawn it. Some info on that:

We're definitely looking at some more expanded features and just gameplay for how organisations will interact with each other. I know for a long time we've been building that, at least some way that you can share ships within your organisation.

The exact details on how that will structure out is still being sorted and whether or not you'll have an organisation coffer or the organisation saying "Hey we need to buy an Idris everyone just chip into this pool" and that goes through, then be a little bit in the air because at a certain point someone needs to own something so it may just default to ownership of the organisation leader but the ability to share out and allow others to use your ships in a big group is definitely a big thing we want to deliver.

Viper482

Babuinix said:

If this #concerns you should definitely stay away from the game.

For the record, a new player can fly any ship without having to buy/grind them, you can board other players, you can steal ships or you can simply serve as crewman. Depending on your social network and overall diplomatic skills the limits are thin.

The benefits of being an actual player and not a vehicle, having ships fully modelled inside out and a game made with space legs in mind from the get go.

Would you white knights just knock off the BS already? There is no reality in this dimension in which this game is not pay to win. Don't tell me people are paying thousands of dollars of REAL money for ships that "ANYONE" can fly in game for free. You are either ignorant, lying, or not telling the whole story (same as lying in my book). This game is bad for the business, period. 

I backed this game in the beginning and it has turned into a money grabbing fiasco. I hope it fails miserably and I hope all of you spending ridiculous money on pixels lose everything you put into it. You deserve nothing less. I only hope a lesson is learned from this and it never happens again.