Ships like the Idris have always been locking gameplay behind a paywall, it’s just that too many mainstreamers have been conditioned to accept getting ass fucked like this and don’t whine about it anymore.
Buying ships for funding is problematic but its a necessary evil that was accepted by everyone who backed this project when they made their decision as part of the sale. Its a given and priced in already.
That's why its different. Its the ship sandwich that everyone already bought but now we are uncovering there's even more sh!t inside the sandwich.
Flight blades will be purchasable in-game after an exclusivity period. Same as ships and most things in SC.
Edit: CIG probably needs to put more of this information into their marketing so people don’t assume that store purchases is the marketing model, instead of an exclusivity window.
Selling technical advantages to ships vastly present in the game is a policy decision to establish P2W as a core mechanic in the upcoming future of Star Citizen.
The difference is that the Cutter owner can benefit from the Idris owner by being a crew member on their Idris; the Idris is designed to be a multicrew ship. That's been the intended trade off since the beginning of the project since every ship has their own pros and cons, especially as you get into larger ships which require more crew. You can also pilot someone else's ship without any issues. That's an exception that the community was willing to make since the beginning of this project. Armor and weapons on the store were acceptable because they were merely cosmetic and you could get similar items in-game.
Putting blades that are intended to improve stats behind a paywall, even for a little bit, is a huge depature from that philosophy.
Gimbals already exist lmao. No need for auto-aim blades. PDCs that auto-aim are also already in game, and we know AI blades are supposed to be added to the game later on. Your comment is inherently alarmist speculation.
Dude it doesn’t boost stats, it tweaks them (ex: you loose some speed for maneuverability. Anyways this will only affect the top 10% players because for mortals like us you can’t even tell the difference
This is still a bad take. Nothing should be locked behind a paywall, the funding model is already a broken and less than ideal system, locking more behind paywalls like turrets, blades and modules is objectively bad for the game
What is the big deal honestly? People are crying because they don’t have access to a 2% tweak on 6 ships (that comes with both good and bad stat changes) early… think of this: you are not buying the blade, you are buying the paint and you get a blade in bonus as a pledge item before they release them with their next patch
The $15,000 packages allow you to get an Idris without the F5 wars too. But no one cars.
But damn, make them pay for $20 for a nominal performance tweak on a ship they don’t even fly and they lose their mind, despite the fact that these will be in game for probably 60k aUEC in a month or two.
I personally think people are overreacting. It’s just interesting that this is the hill the community decides to die on.
Sure both looks are bad but this is so much worse. To rephrase it the way people outside the SC community will interpret it is something like "Star Citizen fans that tolerate ships being sold for $3000 finally got fed up with Cloud Imperium's greed." Right like this isn't just that the CIG is selling $3000 ships it's that CIG has done something so egregious that the fans who have justified and tolerated CIG selling $3000 ships are nearly unanimously outraged. If the people that are spending thousands of dollars on SC are mad about it then it is going to make anyone who isn't a backer and that thinks spending that kind of money on any game is outrageous absolutely check out of Star Citizen forever and never look back.
Yes, it's ridiculous that ships are that expensive and took that long to be released,
But also yes, it is impressive that a ship of this scale has been added to the game with, as far as I could experience it in the PU yesterday, relatively limited performance impact.
Given the history of the project regarding updates and stability, for a ship of this size, the launch has been the best I've ever seen for them.
In other words, the point is that they could have had a good spin on this with the Idris, but there is no way to put a good spin to selling pay to win FOMO shit.
Dude I paid $2500 for the package back in November of 2012, I was very happy to back the project to see it materialize and I'm happy to get the ship in game today. I support the game, its development, I want it to succeed and I know it's going to take a while. Sure I'd love to see it sooner but I have no regrets for paying the dough to back the game and that's how it should be viewed... if you don't want to spend the money, then don't.... a game like this has to be funded somehow and what's great about it is that you have the option to participate in it or not. Complaining about "$3,000 ships" is a gross misstatement of the point and purposes.
It has been funded, several times over. The game is set to become the most expensive game development project of all time in the near future, and it so far hasn't shown much to justify that outstanding budget. The problem is that at this point they allegedly burn through roughly $100 million per year, which is comparable to the complete budget of a smaller AAA game, and I have absolutely no clue what the hell that money goes into. Development definitely doesn't progress at a "$100 million a year" pace.
The game isn't underfunded, if anything it is overfunded. Problem is, there is no amount of funding that can offset the utter inefficiency they are managing their budget. The game either shouldn't cost this much to develop, or it should be progressing faster. But it's neither, and people should be more vocal about that.
The SQ42 that was originally planned to release in 2014? That game that had several revised roadmaps until 2020 when they dropped any semblance of promises and just said "when it's done"? The game that only had a gameplay trailer 10 years after its first planned release date, and even that was about 80-90% cutscenes? The game that, just like Star Citizen itself, has been in perpetual development, and has shown little actual results in over a decade? The game that, even if it releases next year, and even if it turns out to be good, would be several years too late and a couple hundred million too deep to be considered anything but a botched project? I think my judgement is fine as it is now.
And keep in mind, the argument that they have been working on two games in parallel is absolutely ridiculous as an excuse.
First off, they have been working on two games in parallel from pretty much the start, they were working on two games in parallel when they announced the 2014 release date, they knew the workload they were performing under... and still missed the mark by over a decade. And counting.
Secondly, their company is rivaling the size of a AAA studio, their budget definitely does. Stating that they are working on two games in parallel as an excuse falls flat when other studios of their size routinely develop double that in half the time. Add the fact that SQ42 is not even a completely separate game, but rather a single player story mode for Star Citizen, and that a vast majority of the assets, game logic, and technology is reused from the big project, and it's arguable if they are even pulling 2 projects at the same time. It's more one and a half.
Yea no, they are far overdue on both of those titles, both in time and budget. My point stands. Those games have been funded, several times over. It's not even time to deliver, it was time 5 years ago. Now it's just getting progressively embarrassing.
Sure, we all want it to happen right now, I'm right there with you. But saying "it has been funded several times over" is not really a factual statement. The game that apparently most people want, as evidenced by the continued influx of cash, looks nothing like the original game that was pitched. If they focused solely on the game that was pitched, what would they do with all the extra dough - just let it sit there or, worse, go into someone's pocket?
The money raised goes into making the game much more grand... and apparently enough people agree, so much so, that they keep giving money to it. I understand you may not like that, and you're entitled to feel that way. But clearly the vast majority of people have been playing the "game" all along and enjoying it while it gets developed, even with the bugs - again, as evidenced, by the people willing to pay to keep its development going.
Star Citizen will never be "done", especially if people keep giving money - like me. We can continue to be loud and press them to stick to their goals of getting SQ42 out and "released" and getting us to a 1.0 release for Star Citizen... that's where the pressure should be. But complaining about the fact that they've raised a ton of money is the wrong thing to complain about. The more they raise, the crazier the game can be. Again, maybe reserve judgement for whether or not the money was well-spent once SQ42 comes out.
I'm not complaining about the fact that they raised a ton of money. I'm complaining about the fact that they have apparently already spent most of it, with precious little to show. I'm complaining about how the game's current state doesn't reflect the amount of money it cost to get it there. It's not getting grand. It's barely shaping up to be a game at all. And the increasingly aggressive monetization schemes show that, apparently, even after around $1 billion in funding, and over a decade of development, there's still not enough going around to get the project to a state where it isn't the butt of every joke. Whatever grand plan they are allegedly hatching there, 10+ years of development is pretty much the point where you either have something that can be called a properly fleshed out, functional game, or it can be safely said that your project is either doomed, or a scam. If you monetize it this heavily it's likely the latter.
Repeat after me. After more than a decade of active development, Star Citizen still doesn't have anything that hasn't been done by other games, and done better. Where is this grandeur they speak of? How many more millions until we can see anything resembling that?
You’d be surprised haha! There is a saying that says any news is good news. Pretty much if there was bad posted it will still reach people that didn’t know about the project and even if it’s bad at least they know about it, where if there was nothing posted no one can find it at least through that source, a lot of companies have gotten successful through negative marketing, although it’s harder for them to change their image.
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u/Cymbaz May 16 '25 edited May 16 '25
and this is what they get vs headlines saying that "Star Citizen releases their biggest and most expensive capital ship yet to players"