However the product itself lacks...everything.
I don't know if I, a frequent Star Citizen player and Day 1 backer would say it lacks "everything", and am unsure if your hyperbole was just for dramatic effect but from the first executable to where we are now in Alpha version 3.4 (soon to be 3.5), we have an impressive amount of content-all things considered, especially via in-game locales and systems that have facilitated some incredible emergent gameplay among the player base.
The "Jumptown Wars" have been an amazing thing to watch and participate in, and I encourage you to go look through the Star Citizen subreddit to see some of the in-game coordination players are engaging in just to secure a static trading depot on a dead moon (diving deeper into the anecdote rabbit hole: I participated in a 12 ship assault on said depot when a pilot in the player "Organization"-SC's guild system-I'm a member of was shot down by a rival group and requested evac).
It's light years from lacking "everything". It's not complete, but it's also not near as empty of an experience as you seem to be suggesting.
Kiiiind of? As in, you can see the framework of how it could work, and to a certain extent, specific actions by one player at-for example-the Grim Hex Orbital station can affect trade for another player, but it's a level of detail I wont bore you with by typing out a gigantic wall of text.
But again, it's not fully fleshed out, and lacks a few elements, but it's not nothing, and what it is, is enough to have spawned a trade war among players, which we are having loads of fun with.
In my opinion it's a terrible abomination and it reflects Roberts career and pretty much the worse things about the gaming industry today. I don't see a single good thing about what is happening there. I just hope nobody, ever will get the idea that this is a way of delivering a game or any kind of product.
And just for the record, despite liking space sims I'm also not planning to pay $27,000 for a starter pack.
Well the good news is a Star Citizen starter pack these days runs about the same cost as your average AAA game these days, give or take a few bucks.
You can't add SQ42 at that price later, so if you're interested in single player be sure to hit that checkbox.
What are you talking about? You can get in for $35.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...
Since then, I've spent time watching and the main problem is the same one I had with games like Destiny 2 at launch or Elite: Dangerous (played both, wish I had waited two more years). There's a kernel of fun in there, but that's where it ends, and there are plenty of other games out there that have both the kernel of fun and a fleshed out execution.
Star Citizen doesn't look bad, it just looks incomplete against its ridiculous ambitions, and I'm lumping this in among games that will probably become complete a few iterations after release. I would much rather have the game as promised, but I've seen this pattern too many times before and there are too many other great games in the meantime for me to hold my breath for it.
When SQ42 finally launches in 2020, they'll probably want to expand the userbase, and marketing is an effective way to do that. Even Rockstar, which is a current industry legend with unbeatable name recognition and hype around GTA and RDR, still spends hundreds of millions in advertising.
Who will they advertise to, they've attracted enough attention that any potential players have already heard of this project?
For some examples, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3 both had 35 million dollar marketing budgets. Grand Theft Auto V was 128 million. CoD: Modern Warfare 2 was 200 million.
Since Roberts promised to only spend the crowdfunding money on game development, all that money has to come from somewhere. That means either signing on with a publisher, or taking outside investment.
EDIT: this one https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/Mustang_Omega
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_trades/search?q=Omega
No idea how people handle escrow on those gray market transactions, maybe there are trusted middlemen who will do it for a cut. I’d be iffy on trading a limited edition ship to some random person online.
If I had to guess, I'd say you're either not a backer, or you haven't played recently.
I haven't even played Elite:Dangerous in ages since the Alpha 3.1 update came out and Elite is one of my favorite space series of all time
I came into this thread looking for the acronym. Thanks for not letting me down.
I mean, there are plenty of controversial topics being discussed on the internet, but I only see the F-word being used ad libtum when the topic is either cryptocurrency or Star Citizen. Perhaps these two have more in common than it looks?
The early demos can certainly do more than anything currently on the market...