this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Nope. Nothing means anything until it releases. They had an hour of gameplay footage over 5 years ago. The only line these fucks are holding is the bottom line while they milk their players for hundreds of dollars whenever they release a fancy ship.
Even worse is when they announce the future release of a fancy ship and sell limited hulls. Over $1k per ship with no actual release date, but the ships are all sold out.
Between the two of you, you've complained they're selling both too many and too few paid ships.
The claim they make is that they sell better ships because they want there to be late-game ships in the universe on launch day, and that they want the number limited so the game is properly balanced. If they weren't trying to grab cash at least a little bit, they could have raffled them off or given them for free to the people with the most playtime in alpha, so there wasn't a need to involve money, but their claim isn't wildly inconsistent with their actions.
I think part of the reason there's no set release date is that without shareholders breathing down their necks to release early to recoup their investment, they don't see any advantage to releasing sooner rather than later. Maybe that means they'll polish the game to a degree we've never seen before, but that could either mean a good game with no bugs on launch day, or a game that no one ever gets to play because some perfectionists working on it will never be satisfied.
You're so close to understanding.
No, they said non-existant ships are sold out for 1k. They're talking about how easy the playerbase is to milk.
Can you buy the ships with in game currency? If not, why the fuck not? If so, let them grind for it. I promise the players have plenty of time before release.
And herein lies the problem. The pledge ships are supposedly just to fund early development and will not remain after launch because that would make the actual game pay to win. Right now it's just "pay early to win" which is better somehow I guess? But the point is they've made over 800 million goddamn dollars from that. Why in the hell would they EVER release this game when they have people shoveling over hundreds and thousands for in game items? Blizzard, EA, Bethesda, ubisoft, every big dev is looking at this macrotransaction system and frothing with envy. If they release the game, that kills their golden goose and dumps new players into a game they'll have to grind for months or years to achieve what early players achieved by opening their wallet. And the new players simply won't.
So you're almost correct about having a no incentive to release early, it's a negative incentive to release. They'll never do it. They keep expanding the scope and changing the roadmap and players keep coping and shoveling money into the fire while they play what is essentially a very good looking tech demo with no depth.
Exactly! They’ve found an incredibly successful business model without having to release a finished game. There’s no incentive for them to change that.
That's literally the reason Chris Roberts was kicked off Freelancer.