I’ve been backing since early 2013. All I want is to have fun. Pay 2 win = Fun, at least to me. I have backed as much as I did because I have been entertained by the development of this game - the journey. I hope that the end goal - the release of the game also gives me fun. I don’t want to be the terror of the star lanes. I don’t want to control a quadrant of space. I don’t want to be a rich person in game or own the most ships. I want to play the game with nice people, not be bored and have some cool stories to tell about grouping afterwards. So, all this stuff about pay 2 win? If you want to take gaming seriously, go for it. However, for me, it is a GAME. At least it will be when it comes out. Pledge, don’t pledge. It’s up to you. You decide what is fun for you and do that.
I played EVE a long time ago, however the skill sets are different IMO than SC. EVE you don’t have to actually “fly” the ship, you click where you want to go. In SC you “fly” the ship via adjusting your thrusters, mass and vectors matter. Not saying they don’t in EVE but the “flying” was more dumbed down. For me, EVE was easier for flying. Now, EVE still requires skill in timing and responding to the elements of combat, but the flying part wasn’t the hardest part. In SC, to me anyway the flying is the hardest part. That to me is the biggest difference at least from the combat side of things.
I would agree with flying being very different. I bought SC last night and flew around, walked around, got my feet wet. I got into some combat with what I think was an NPC, blew it up and it wasn’t more or less difficult than Eve…just different. A lot less to manage as far as equipment goes but more to manage on the flying end, and it equaled out.
Anyway, I’m ready to move on from comparing it since I’ve made the decision to just try it out for myself.
I’ve also been following this game and am wishy washy on giving it a try, for now.
I would appreciate more posts of your experience with the game as you progress, if not too much trouble.
Certainly. I have about 8 hours in and these are my initial impressions.
There would be only one reason to purchase this game imo and that would be to follow a game in development. By that, I mean that you are interested in behind the scenes design, programming, bug reporting, and feature discussion about a game that could be realeased.
I would not suggest SC if you are looking for any kind of gameplay experience. The interfaces are poor, optimization is poor, most features do not function properly (HUDs, missions, even just getting out of the room you wake up in is a chore if the game doesn’t want to let you out), buying and selling are not reliable, and nearly everything you do is unintuitive (which could be mitigated through a learning curve, but it’s quite clunky). Flying the ship around isn’t too bad, but the QoL features are lacking.
Now, with all this said, there could be some value in learning bits about how to play the game before release to be a bit ahead of the curve (learning ships, weapons, etc).
Honestly, if I had it to do over again I would have waited. I don’t regret it, but at the same time it is unimpressive as is.
You pretty much summed up my feelings about SC at this point 
Well done!
EXACTLY!
If you are expecting any type of game play experience then you are expecting a BETA. A real Alpha is NOT feature complete, it is in development of even the most basic features.
I don’t care what other games call themselves, alpha, beta, pre-release, early release, etc.
A real Alpha level development looks exactly like what you see in Star Citizen right now. Too many companies are calling their pre-release version of the game an Alpha or a Beta release when it is really marketing release to drum up interest in a game that is close to complete.
That is not what SC is doing.
My only issue with how CIG has handled things to date is in how they set expectations.
For you to expect a game right now means that CIG did a poor job of presenting an accurate picture of what the development looks like right now.
EDIT: However, we here in this forum did not set the wrong expectation. We all told you what you would get, which is exactly what you describe. So I am a little concerned about the way you ignored that and then made the little dig about the game possibly being released in the future.
For example: You are looking for interfaces, optimization, these things are not Alpha level features that you should be concerned with.
So as I said elsewhere, I think what you are looking for is a Beta version of Star Citizen, which is where you will find a lot more of the ‘game’ you want to play. Until then, at least you helped back the game to get it there and you have an account ready to go when the game hits beta!
By George I think he’s got it!
Precisely why my version sits in the closet for now.
Thank you.
I believe I will wait until closer to release.
I didn’t ignore anything, and I think the dig is my opinion to give. I believe when you come out with an alpha you at least need a suitable core to work with. This is a detached mess.
With the amount of money you have invested, I don’t blame you for defending SC’s model. You have more reason to see this succeed than I do. But all SC is right now is a theory. When I say that it is a theory, that is not a dig, it’s just what it is. I went in with an open mind after listening to both sides and just decided I wanted to see for myself what was really going on. I saw what I saw and I gave my opinion on where the state of the game is right now and I stand by that.
I think it’s important to look at the whole thing as a package. Who is developing it? What are their resources? And most importantly: How is the progress? Looking at the whole package, it appears that they may have overextended themselves and the ramifications are yet to be seen.
While you are concerned about my dig, I am concerned about your overenthusiasm. We are clearly on opposite sides of praise for SC and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean that they are not going to put out a good product eventually. I hope they do, as I’d love to get my 50 bucks worth. But for now, I’m taking the position of skepticism and I don’t think it’s prudent to invest any more.
I’m neutral, I think, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere… frankly, I barely follow the game. I’ve followed this thread, however, and have found your commentary refreshing, overall. But I don’t understand how you arrived at your “…it appears that they may have overextended themselves…” conclusion. Enlighten me, please.
Maybe overextended wasn’t the right choice of words? Going back and seeing the history of the fundraising efforts, I don’t think they envisioned the resources that would come their way. As a result, it appears to me on the surface that as the money came in, they became more ambitious…to the point that we have what is now a very lengthy development. In addition to that, there are many people who are invested so heavily as to not be able to step back and look at it objectively any more. That’s why I needed to take a look myself since I take both those who are invested heavily and also those who are very critical with a grain of salt.
So let me change the word to “overambitious”. Ambition can be a good thing of course, as well as pushing the envelope. But the list of goals keeps getting pushed back over and over and I attribute that to CIG overestimating what money can do.
I really don’t know much about the reality of game development. What I’ve heard matches my expectations regarding an Alpha (NOT 7 Days, apparently. 
), but truly I don’t have ANY basis for comparison.
While you certainly are entitled to your opinion, your understanding of an Alpha is simply wrong. I have tried to explain that to you multiple times now - but let me give it one more go. In software development, an Alpha is where you build the core features. It is where you experiment with what works and what doesn’t work to build this core to which you are referring. But, over the past few years game companies have used this term to define their pre-release version of the game to build momentum behind a game. Alpha and Beta access have always been called Alpha and Beta testing until recent years, for good reason. The entire purpose of access to the build at that stage is to assist with testing the features that are being built.
So you had expectations that were impractical at best. But, you knew that going in. Whether you chose to ignore it was totally up to you.
Regardless of how much I put into backing this game, I am also quite aware that at any moment it can fail. That was also stated from the beginning of this conversation. Any money put into this project, be it $50 or $5000, must be viewed as an investment which by its nature can be lost in an instant. So do not presume that my enthusiasm is driven by my amount of backing, quite the inverse actually. It is interesting to note that there are backers who have contributed far more than me and they never even boot up the client, and there are those who have but the base package and I see them online all of the time. So enthusiasm and backing level do not seem to be related in the way you think.
I do agree with you that you must view the entire project as a whole. But you have failed to do that. You have failed to understand how the game will work when it is finished. You have ignored that information that was offered and instead chose to form your own ideas of how you think it will exist. You believe it is a theory, which means you have spent very little time in actually researching what they are doing. Or, you simply are unable to comprehend the significance of their accomplishments so far. That is understandable for anyone who is not intimately familiar with software development.
You came into this investment expecting to play a game, despite being told otherwise. The entire point of access to the development builds at this point in the project is to see how they are building the game and to assist with testing. There is no game to play. That comes later.
So yes we are clearly on opposite sides, but in a far different way than you presume.
Again, I am sorry you did not get what you were looking for with SC. Perhaps it would be best for you to return at Beta.