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Comment by Grue3 | Hacker News Reader

Even if he actually completed the game, clearly at this point it's basically pay-to-win. Who wants to play against the guys who spent thousands of dollars on all the best ships? So the gameplay is flawed from the start.

What's sad, there are other ambitious (and actually existing) games, like Dwarf Fortress that could've easily used all this money.

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If you try to play that way, it's actually pay-to-lose-money. In EvE, the rule is never fly anything you're not willing to lose, and the same applies to SC. After all: why would anyone complain about the opportunity to blap an unskilled carebear's expensive ship when they can collect a bounty on it?

The main difference with SC seems to just be the insurance policies. In EvE the policy will cover much of the raw material cost of the ship, which is prolly going to be a painful fraction of the total outfitting. SC has the Lifetime insurance which guarantees you'll have a hull to fly... but not much else. It may even be possible to insure fittings and cargo, but again, that's a gold sink in-game.

It's no more pay-to-win than eve online, where you can also essentially spend $$ on virtual spaceships. I see a lot of people bringing this up but in a game where you don't actually "win", more money doesn't actually make you win.

> What's sad, there are other ambitious (and actually existing) games, like Dwarf Fortress that could've easily used all this money.

I've never seen the lost sale fallacy and the fallacy of relative privation combined like that, that's fun. Anyway this is completely irrelevant - it's also money that could have gone to cancer research.

>I see a lot of people bringing this up but in a game where you don't actually "win", more money doesn't actually make you win.

You don't the guy who spent $30,000 on ships (recent article) is going to win encounters more often than the guy who spent the minimum?

Is the guy going to cruise around on an invincible $10000 spaceship? (None exists, fwiw)

What if he bought 300 $100 spaceship, what's his advantage over the guy who has one $100 spaceship + insurance?

Are you able to tell me what the guy's advantage is? I'm sure he has more ships, but that's not useful for an individual. Maybe he'll hand them out to his guild? Who knows.

The economy and ship performance layout of the game is similar to Eve: Bigger/More luxurious ships cost more, but are not necessarily mean they're more powerful. The Banu Merchantman is a trading ship which costs twice the price of a Hornet, the top dogfighting ship. You can bet a Hornet would win against five of the former.

PS: The studio is not stupid, they know they can't just go the pay2win route if they want the game to actually be playable.

> The Banu Merchantman is a trading ship which costs twice the price of a Hornet, the top dogfighting ship. You can bet a Hornet would win against five of the former.

So when going head to head against another guild to deliver cargo, which guild is going deliver more cargo, the one where everyone bought the bigger more luxurious Banu, or the one where lots of people have the early starter cargo ship?

It looks like HN has decided to go the hivemind route of downvoting anything and everything that defends Star Citizen, no matter the reasoning. That is extremely sad.

Eve isn't pay to win. The ships that are actually expensive are basically flying coffins, they're useful for large scale activities but you'll die if you try to fight alone with it. Most large groups will have doctrine ships that are essentially free.

Aren't all pay-to-win games are like this yet we see they keep succeeding commercially? (i.e. Clash of titans and tons of F2P+P2W PC games)

Based on your assumption they all should've failed but clearly (and unfortunately) this business model works.

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