Windows Star Citizen

No.
It's like EVE in a way, with the most expensive ships only realistically available to those who plough the hours in to the game. Is that fair? Probably. The game shouldn't let everybody acces the highest tiers after ten hours of play, doing so would render such things meaningless.

Could somebody playing for a few hours each week obtain a much better ship in a few weeks of play? For sure, and they get a sense of improvement and benefit as well.

 

No, but could you define 'win' for me? There are no levels - you can't even level up your character. A Hornet will probably be able to take down a Reclaimer - does that mean they win?

Anyone that has played Mechwarrior Online knows how these things work. Its a very good system, and all comes down to skill, the terrain you engage on, the mech you choose, and how you have outfitted that mech. Its scissor paper stone all the way.

In Mechwarrior, the biggest Inner Sphere Mech is an Atlas - its the most expensive mech in the game (you can earn it through credits by playing the game or buy it using purchasable mech credits), its an absolute beast, here is a pic:



However, it has a stupidly low top speed and a terrible torso twist speed. This means, that in a light mech (cheapest mechs in the game), if you catch one alone, you can run rings around it, tearing apart its rear armour, and destroying its engine. Being left behind the pack in an Atlas is a constant worry, and with its slow speed, a single wrong decision can be the end of you (crest a hill, and walk into 6 enemy mechs, and by the time you've shunted your mech into reverse, you are already dead).

I only have an Avenger, and I certainly don't consider myself at a disadvantage to anyone else. If I outfit it for combat, and I'm a skilled pilot, I guarantee I'll take down a Hornet, and for anything else (exploration, trading etc), it doesn't matter anyway.

 

Now we're getting into semantics, but as you've asked I'd declare the 'win' in P2W as any of these:

- A 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' ship*.

- A leg up in the game.

- An asset with any advantage over assets readily available in game.

- A 'short cut' to avoid gameplay or delays in gameplay.

- A rare 'bragging points' item that would otherwise take luck and/or time to collect.

I think buying a $350 ship that would otherwise take several (many?) hours of focused gaming to afford avoids a sufficient amount of low level grinding to fit my definition of "Pay to win".

Anyone who has ever played a space trading sim knows it can be slow going at first until you have a ship large / fast / strong enough to handle what you want it to do. Laying down the $$ on a 'better' ship rather than having to work up to it sure sounds like P2W to me.

BTW, I have no objection to this though. As long as those with uber starting ships don't go griefing noobs working their way through the game then all is golden.

*Work it, make it, do it. Our work is never over.

 

Yeah, that's going to happen.

 

I'm finding the constant ship sales and the ecosystem around it all a bit of a turn off if I'm honest; it's certainly not what I envisioned when I originally signed up right back on day 1. It's the main reason I rarely post here anymore as my interest has waned somewhat.

I'm going to sit back and wait for the game to be released and see what happens; hopefully it will be everything I dreamt of and more but until then I'll keep focusing on Elite Dangerous, which I appreciate isn't sin free in this aspect, but it's nearer release and shaping up even better than my high expectations.

 

Its getting SO GOOD!

I'm totally pumped for Beta 2!

 

I think SC's downside is the ability to buy every single ship (well, nearly) at this point of development - there's little waiting in the universe that you simply can't buy if you have very deep pockets. This means that for the person who bought every ship for launch there's going to be no driver to play the game to obtain a new/better ship.

Saying that, I think the numbers of people who are going to buy things like the Reclaimer will be low. From the stats given by CIG, a lot of people are still just buying Auroras and the lower level fighters, meaning the expensive ships will still be rare.

I get the excitement for ED, simply because it's a lot closer to launch (by end of 2014) and is therefore a hell of a lot more polished and actually a game you can play properly. I don't think SC will reach that level of "omg I want to play this so bad" for at least another year when I reckon they'll release the first alpha of the persistent universe (and also have locked down the flight model etc). The upcoming FPS and PU reveal does show they're making progress though, but screenshots and videos aren't the same as playing.

 

• Hornet - package, physical; for the shinies may down/side grade this depending what comes up, but almost certainly not upgrade. Unless a Super upgrade appears...
• Scout - ship; I already have a Spacepilot for "work" so the idea of the most 6DoF ship was hard impossible to resist.
• Aurora - ship; for the bit-sec formation flying lols... it's melt-able and could join the Hornet for a better package, I have no great sentiment towards it. See what the variants hold, if there's a cool+cheep upgrade it might get it.

But really, that's my total SC budget, unless gameplay totally blows me away, in which case I might see about getting a decent joystick - but at the moment it's Spacepilot + Trackball + Wacom 'cause that's what I got...

 

Reclaimer sale is going well. Over $800k in 2 days!

Current funding over $54,950,000. Expect $55m letter Monday or Tuesday.

 

Yeah, roughly 1000 sold both Sat & Sun you'd imagine (2285 reclaimers worth of funding added) and thats just accounting for the cash income, it doesnt account for people like me who've melted to buy one, so im sure its more like 3000+ so far (it can also be assumed many will also melt in the future if something better comes along too, not to mention buying to sell on the GM at a markup). Thats a heck of a lot, but then theres over 600,000 citizens, how many have bought something, and how many are simply user accounts, i dunno, but it makes 3000 in a 100,000 (1 in 6 as real citizens) a very small number.

There was a flight deck pic posted on Sandi's facebook the other day, it looks like an RSI style cockpit, but it also matches up to a side profile image of the Reclaimer, but i tried to measure the cockpit size in the holoviewer, and i make it about 1.7m wide, and the FB photo looks like it'd be 4-5m wide. Shame really, cos it looked plausible, even if somewhat surprising for something 'concept' (theres no model seen of the Starfarer, MM or 890 Jump for example) but i've no idea what it could be, either.

 

Funding now $55,101,730! Chairman's letter unlocked.

 

Is Elite Dangerous worth £50 then? And does it have MP that'd allow me to play CO-OP with my mate?

 

Yes. No, not yet.

You can both be in the same server (but it will be the 2 of you and NPC's), but actually doing anything together is a pain in the arse.

 

That's fair. Definitely worth the £50 price of entry, but until you can bind your jump drives together, playing co-op is a bit harder than it could be.

 

Isn't there some kind of update coming on the 30th too? Actual concise info on stuff is hard to find

 

Yes! Beta 2! If its anything like the last patch, it'll be absolutely massive with a boat load of new features.

One thing thats confirmed is 10x the number of systems to travel to - now up to 500!

 

But without CO-OP it just seems so... Lonely...

 

Tell you what though, in the latest patch, they've added the ability to see and track people in supercruise. They appear as fast moving blue light. Coming into busy systems is awesome - I've been in supercruise with a ton of people around me, its a a real cool sight to behold.

 

I had been contemplating getting the Retriever (if the price was right) in order to get into SC, but after having seen the price... I'd rather earn it than pay for it in hard cash.

I might get my pre-order in for SC in the next couple of weeks, depending on finances, but only the bog-standard edition. I'd prefer to earn my ships.

 

So is the latest 16 gig update for star citizen worth the download? I have been keeping Elite D up to date but really holding off any more play time for Beta 2. The updates for Elite D are much smaller (thankfully!) so less of an issue for me (I moved house, get a great quality of life now but a very poor internet connection, approx 3 mbps, down from the 60 meg fibre I used to have!) so I tend to be a bit picky as to my downloads as files of that size can take 10-20 hours depending on DL speed actually achieved.