Chris Roberts--the primary creator of Games such as Privater, Wing Commander and Freelancer is back in action!.
FROM THE CHAIRMAN:
Welcome!
If you’ve made it here, you probably know who I am. Maybe you have heard of Wing Commander and its sequels, or perhaps Strike Commander, Privateer or Freelancer.
If not, you’re still welcome!
I grew up making video games. I sold my first game at the age of 13 and created Wing Commander when I was 21. But 10 years ago, at the height of my career I took a break. Not because I stopped loving or playing games but because I had become frustrated with the limits of the technology at the time to realize my vision.
I decided to pursue my desire to create detailed worlds and tell sophisticated stories in film.
I always said the moment I became interested in making games again was when I was going to come back.
With the power of today’s computers and the reach of the internet I finally feel I have the tools to build the connected experience that I always dreamed of. A world that would be more satisfying and richer than any film I could work on.
With films you tell stories but with games you create worlds.
If you’ve played my games, you’ll know that’s what I love to do.
I’m here to tell you that I have been working on something for just under a year, something that embraces everything that my past games stood for but takes it to the next level.
I hope you’ll be as excited by it as I am.
My new endeavor is still in its early stages but I invite you to take the journey with me.
If you register below you’ll become an insider that will not only give you early access to the game’s website and forums, but you will also get the opportunity for rewards and privileges that no one else will get. It’s my way of showing how important your early involvement and support is.
The full announcement will be at 10am Eastern Standard Time (UTC -5) on the 10th day of the 10th month of this year.
My name is Chris Roberts.
And if you would indulge me I would like to create a world for you.
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The link is here (and "42" is what will get you in if you get stuck). Go enroll and let this guy know you are interested--this is the original scfi game maker who broke all the rules and did the things no one else would.
I would pay for this game in advance without even knowing what it was.
I believe the link gives you the chance to be an alpha-beta tester for the game during the next two years. I'd highly recommend it.
I also think it would be fantastic if Stardock and Ironclad sent him a note of support (I'm just sayin'...)
It'll only be awesome once I get there.
I am so all over this part too. >
Woot!
Sinperium ... in all seriousness. What shall we call our 'guild' / 'commonwealth' / 'adventure crew' / 'tickle Carbon until he giggles club' (T-CUHG)/ etc?
A good question. I currently have the crappy start ship "Aurora" but my wife picked up on my enthusiasm and asked if I wanted the game for Christmas. I may bump up to the "Lancer" package here.
Perhaps, "Slaves of Sinperium"?... "Minions of Sinperium's Majesty"?..."Subjects of the Sinperium"?..."Sinperium's Servants--Crushers of Carbon, Slayers of Zombies?".
Just some ideas.
I will allow Stant and Seleuceia to serve me.
On a more serious note...
Anyone wanting to jump in with the lifetime insurance and lower cost packages have until the end of this weekend to do so. After that, specialty ships and deals fade away and have to be earned or bought in-game only.
The Lancer package is what I have. You get a hard-cover modding book!!! Plus the Lancer, and a citizen's ID card, and a 32gb USB stick loaded with the game, and ... oh you get the picture. We could start our own Lancer club. You know, driving around with the bass up, windows down, looking cool.
Yeah--Gangnam style.
So.... if I just donate $10, will that make me eligible for the lifetime insurance, as long as I do it before the end of the week? Can't afford a ship, but I think the game looks really cool.
@Armaneus...
I'm not sure if the smaller pledges (they can go as low as $1.00 on Kickstarter) that don't offer a copy of the game qualify you for insurance.
As I understand it, if your pledge(s) gets you a ship, you have lifetime insurance on the ship that comes with your pledge.
On a personal note...
I did a little surveying of the Eve Online community just to see what the feeling was on Star Citizen. While there are a few mildly positive views it seems the majority of the community there is completely unaware of (or else completely silent on) Star Citizen--which really surprised me.
Of the few threads I found with any mention, only one really addressed Star Citizen directly--the other was focused on the Elite:Dangerous Kickstarter project.
On the sparse comments by Eve citizens addressing Star Citizen they can be summed up easily in two words: cynical and dismissive.
In fact, one of the resident board moderators--unbidden--closed the "What do you think about this?" thread and directed people to the Elite game discussion thread (which has no mention at all of Star Citizen)as a place for "those sort of discussions".
While I am maddened by Stardock's "cross-culture" board set-up at times, I am extremely appreciative of their complete openness in letting people post things that might not be directly in their own interest. The fact that this thread is sitting here is a real testament to their good attitude in that respect.
One of the things on the Eve Online forums I noticed was a repeating theme/meme that "all these other games are stealing the idea Eve invented". I'd actually say Chris Roberts is probably as instrumental in setting the stage for there to be a game like Eve as anyone else on the planet is.
Eve certainly "borrowed" from Wing Commander, Elite, Freelancer and many of it's predecessors.
It's a mistake to assume it's simply the game that has made each of these games popular--its the science fiction genre that has done it.
SciFi fans are what drove the prolonged success of Star Trek and Star Wars and made them into cultural memes world-wide. Roddenberry and Lucas were simply huge SciFi fans who wanted to see their dreams on the screen. The fervor for shows such as Firefly came from SciFi fans.
Coming full around to Sins of a Solar Empire...the reason I love the game is it "is SciFi" and smartly done with a need for intelligent play.
I'm really hoping they'll stay the distance and give us a mind blowing Sins II in their own time. I can wait.
@boshimi...
Ok--I am officially bumped up to "lancer" now.
Makes perfect sense, thanks sinperium. I'm also looking forward to when Stardock and Ironclad release Sins II.
NP...I feel your financial pain. I told my wife to give me this for Christmas.
I am super excited for this game to be sure. I pledged the Bounter Hunter package and get a 300i. I could probably scrape together to get a Lancer package ($125) but I think I'd rather earn it in game, that's most of the fun for me. I did do the $10 subscription though as I want to back the game and get the newsletter.
As for the Subscription ($10 or $20 per month for a year until the Alpha comes out) - As noted it just gets you a monthly newsletter and some extra "behind the scenes" info. Nothing in game. The reason why they added these is because the community asked for another way to contribute to help build the game we've always wanted. I and others have suggested even having a monthly donation/subscription of even just $5 per month once the game is released to again show our support and grow the game.
Armaneus - You still have thru the weekend to get in on the early backer prices. The game itself on release will be a $50-$60 game with no subscription Guild Wars 2 style. You will start out with the Aurora ship (that is the base ship all newbies start out with). So if you back now you can sign up with the Early Adopter package for $35 to get the same thing so you save$15-$25 bucks. And you get access to the multi-player ship test Alpha in a year plus the beta plus other goodies. Plus lifetime insurance and no garage fees. The next step up in ship is the $60 package which I got which gets you a 300i to start. So basically if you can scrape together $35 before the weekend is out you'll get a $60 game at nearly half off plus other early backer goodies.
Also another benefit is that once they close the early packer packages all prices go up but those that backed early (before the end of this weekend) can upgrade later for the next few months at todays prices so say after the holidays you have some extra money you could up your pledge for a better beginning ship or some add-ons.
How better are these beginning ships going to be?
If noticeable better then this crowdfunding was P2W system. I know backers should get something extra (ignoring they get the full game for less money), but that should be in stuff that does not provide ingame benefits in a PvP MMO.
Put me as a referral! (ple-ease). My referral link is here.
I know backers should get something extra (ignoring they get the full game for less money), but that should be in stuff that does not provide ingame benefits in a PvP MMO.
Chris said that they would not let players P2W. Any assets given that affect the game can be bought or earned in-game with game cash.
For those who might not have noticed...the forums are accessible again (just not in the header).
http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forums/
Hmm, that link doesn't seem to be doing anything, just brings me to the webpage, unless it is working without giving any feedback. Tried copy/pasting the link also into the referral area on my account page.
Can't wait, this game looks awesome!
All of the ships can be earned in game with regular play. The only "bonus" the backers get is lifetime insurance (vs. buying insurance in game) for the pledge ship only.
I started with one step up over the Aurora not so much for the ship (300i) but there were other things at that pledge level that I wanted (plus to help the game). My goal would be the Constellation (think Firefly or Millennium Falcon) but I'll earn that in game, no fun for me to start out with it.
Also there are going to be dozens of other ships in game that will be better then these ships anyway.
lol - there's an Imperator backing package.
If I have to buy the game, then I'll stick with ACE Online. At least that's somewhat free, even though it's a bit P2W.
$2,134,374pledged of $500,000 goal
BBL, returning to my time machine.
They are over $6.6 million right now with close to 10,000 contributors.
It is NOT P2W
People keep repeating this and it's not the case. You buy ONE copy of the game ONE time and you can play online forever without spending another dime unless you want to while still having in-game access to all the content available in the normal store without paying for any of it.
There are custom skins for early contributors but they are just commemorative and decorative--they don't "do" anything.
There are a limited number of ships in the crowd funding that will also be limited in the normal game and must be captured. This is one shot to buy them but limited and they still can be found in the game.
The starting ships are otherwise ships you can normally earn or buy (if you choose to).
It is P2W. If some players can spend real money to gain ingame benefits then it is P2W. No way around it. Game does not need to be free 2 play to be p2w. Actually the game not being f2p but having p2w features makes it even worse in my eyes (as in more greedy).
BTW, what is this insurance people are talking about? Can anyone explain what it will mean in the game in more detail?
Like Car Insurance. Should your ship be blown up in a battle, or you ram yourself into an asteroid and blow up, etc., if you have insurance then you'll get your base full replaced for free back at your garage/home base. If you do it too much your insurance will go up of course, just like in real life. You can also buy supplemental insurance for your cargo and ship upgrades.
It appears that if you get the game now and in the future your base ship will come with 6 months of insurance paid up, you'll need to pay beyond that. But the early backers got lifetime insurance so no need to pay. But it only covers the base hull, you still have to pay for insurance on upgrades and cargo (if you so choose).
What benefits? Right now different backer levels get different starting ships. Big deal. The game will take actual real life flying skills to do anything or be any good. So what if you buy your big bad Corvette, it's just a base hull with no upgrade, no nothing. And you have no skill. So you decide to head out to the lawless outter rim and I in my "crappy" Aurora all decked out and with my skill I blast you out of the sky. Oooops. No P2W there. LOL
Or maybe you stick to the more policed core systems so you don't need to deal with pirates much (if at all) unless you turn up the PvP slider all the way up. Now you've got the big base hull and the upgrades are crazy expensive to buy (cause it's a big ship). Oooops, gotta go earn some money. But this big lumbering brute of a ship isn't exactly the best at cargo runs, especially without some cargo upgrades (which you can't buy yet cause you got no money). And you need to spend a bunch of money to hire a large crew and higher fuel costs. Or I start out in my much smaller one man hauler, cheaper upgrades and cheaper to make a few trade runs to get some cash. Yea, buying that huge ship was P2W all right.
Basically it's all a balance. Bigger and "better" ship isn't always better when you're starting out nor is it better if you don't know how to fly the thing. And if it's your only ship if you get blown up you'll be back in the same spot if you don't have a lot of credits. Thus you'll probably need to save up to buy a smaller ship which will help you get on your feet. I personally plan on taking the opposite approach and in having my base ship with lifetime insurance be the smaller ship which I can quickly get up and running and work my way up to buying bigger ships for specific jobs.
Anyway, I'm not seeing how it's really P2W once you dig down into the game mechanics.
The starting ship will probably be a small difference and will not affect balance as much, but the other part about buying ingame currency with $ is the problem here. As you will buy all ships and upgrades with ingame currency it will be a really bad system to allow some people faster access to better stuff just because they payed more. That makes is P2W.
So what we need is an eternal multiplayer game that you pay for once up front and NEVER buy anything for again.
That will be $2,000 please.
If you want ongoing development and maintenance, expandable server capacity and regular driver and OS upgrades you have to pay for it.
I can't buy an exclusive "Sword of Gondor" that no one else can ever have. I just have to work longer for the biggest swords. People buying them early won't impact me any more than coming into the game after other people have worked up to them. Pay or play--you pay for them one way or another.
That is the nature of the world.
Buy the game and play only Squadron 42--your whole problem is solved.
P2W is NOT what this game is.
The very definition of P2W is paying for an in-game item that no one else can have (such as a unique ship) that affects game balance such as combat for an example. Star Citizen does not have any of this. You can earn everything in Star Citizen IN GAME WITHOUT PAYING any $$$.
People are complaining about 'users getting things first' and I think it is an absolutely bogus assertion that it will unbalance things.
For example, if I can only play 2 hours a day for a week (14 hours total) but you can play 3 hours a day for a week (21 hours total) is it 'unfair' that you therefore can earn a ship before I do? No, because I can get that same ship it just takes longer. Should everyone be limited to a certain number of hours per week they can play?
Lets assume that does not satisfy you, lets try another tactic. Say someone pays real $$$ to purchase a ship outright and zooms around the universe in the first week blowing stuff up. How is this situation more 'unfair' than if someone starts playing Star Citizen 2 weeks after launch, only to get blown up by someone who has played the previous 2 weeks and earned in game the same ship? The situation is the same regardless. Same ships, same scenario. Is this not therefore more 'fair' as the experience will be more uniform?
This isn't EVE Online where most ships are user ships and people just get ganked. This is going to be similar to Wing Commander & Freelancer where there are many things bigger and meaner than you no matter what. I'd be more concerned with other NPCs than other players in this large universe we'll be playing in.
I'm going to assume that you are trolling users to get a rise when you complain about P2W because you can't purchase 'gold ammunition' or 'gold only ships' with this game. It's not possible. Ultimately everybody has access to the same in game content no matter what.
If you want to keep 'arguing' about this, send some PMs and please quit trolling people on these forums.
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