I see what you're saying about skill and grinding. 

But there needs to be a good balance. In many online games today, it takes anywhere between 40-80 hours to get to the top level and get the best perks. Most of these games don't allow you to buy the perks from the get-go, you have to earn them. I'm a college student, so I don't have time to game 24/7 or grind out a lot either. But I fully expect to have to work my way to the top, not buy my way there, even if it means putting in just a few hours in the weekend. When you have to pay $100+ dollars just to get out of the starter ships, that's too much pay-to-win, and it encourages monetizing all aspects of the game. 

I don't mind the model in, say, free-to-play MMOs. The devs have to make money after all. In games like Star Citizen though, they could easily sell minor incentives like special ship decals/colors, or interior decorations for the hangar or ship, or cosmetic body kits to deck your ship out in. Instead, they decided to milk the fans for all they had by charging hundreds of dollars for in-game ships. 

Most games are a 1 character MMORPG type game though.  Compairing that to a startship MMORPG would be in reality like maxing out each class i'd think.

Additionally... are you sure you've got the economics of this down?


This is going to be the most demanding MMORPG like game out there... so it's probably going to need some serious servers.

Plus... decals and cosmetic items aren't likely to be able to fund the graphics models needed to support expansions.   Which are the only way to keep your MMORPG alive.

You can keep releasing new kickstarters... but why be so clunky when basically, a new kickstarter would just be the same thing as an in app store but more rigidity in rewards?

I would rather them go sub then. I personally wouldn't get it if there was a sub, but it would guarantee revenue for them while giving the players equal grounds. Also, most players will be soloing for the majority of the time, so I would argue that the MMO part of it isn't that demanding. Only when you have major ship battles with over ten ships in one sector do I see it truly being a problem, and even then that will probably be relatively rare. The amount that they've raised on Kickstarter and on their website is already enough to cover practically any expansions they could want, seeing as it's already at $40,000,000 of the original $500,000 they wanted. And the truly hardcore, the ones the game is aiming for, would gladly fork over cash to get custom body jobs on their ships (like a redesigned hull, or even special luxury interiors), or get custom emblems and such, and those wouldn't come cheap, but at the same time they wouldn't give said players an advantage for shelling out cash.

As previously mentioned though... it isn't really even ground.

It's not like this is Street fighter 4 and you can pay to buy a character with SNK boss syndrome.

A subscription system is the WORST of both worlds.  Then you actually are forcing people to pay for something they already paid for.  As opposed to giving people an option to pay for something they already paid for if they want to access late game content quicker.

As for already having enough money.... the project expanded beyond what the budget was, as is what you'd expect to happen.  

Otherwise it just sitting in an account for expansions wouldn't give nearly the same return on investment, and peopel would have to bitch that they artificially have to wait for content they already paid for.  (A more valid complaint quite honestly.)

Is it really a better option to give Star Citizen 40M,  have them spend say... 1M and then keep the rest in a bank account waiting to release expansions at 500,000 a pop?

I can't see how anyone would consider that better.

What I'm trying to say is that they already have gotten $40,000,000 from the community. That is more money than they could have ever possibly imagined, and it should easily cover development along with server costs and expansions for a while, and then the other sum of money can come from non-essesntial microtransactions and the game purchases themselves. Guild Wars 2 showed that the model works fine, and that game had minimal micro-transactions. It had an in-game economy where players could sell each other equipment and items, but that's another story in itself. Let me reiterate that I would not want a sub. I don't buy games that have subs. Pay-to-win games, however, really aren't that different. If you want to be really successful in this game, you will find yourself opening your wallet. Those who don't will have to spend an insane amount of time grinding money for the best ships, which may not even be feasible. 

Let me reiterate that I would not want a sub. I don't buy games that have subs. Pay-to-win games, however, really aren't that different. If you want to be really successful in this game, you will find yourself opening your wallet. Those who don't will have to spend an insane amount of time grinding money for the best ships, which may not even be feasible. 

Pay 2 Win games are very much different.  At least ones like Star Citizen where it's 90% end of game/outside content.

The grinding for ships is going to be the case with or without a money option, so i fail to see the complaint.

Giant amounts of grinding for new ships is the norm for space mmorpgs.

Outside which, like people mentioned, with private server support, it won't matter.  Just play a private server without the shop.  And if you want ship building sped up... play a server that doubles, triples or even quadruples resources.