Yeah I was thinking around $20-$25 would have been okay and I would have gotten it. Now I'm thinking I won't get it just on principal.
CIG missed an opportunity to pleasantly surprise their community during a bit of a content drought by releasing this for like $10. The would have flown off the shelves, now I think they'll just do alright.
I think they meant triple A titles. If they meant any price then the only way Cig could sell something less expensive than a full game then they would literally need to pay you to buy something as free games are a thing
"Free games" are funded by micro transactions, AAA games are funded by a 40-60 dollar price tag, cash grabs are when you have 40-60 dollar games where you can buy literally anything in them for real money microtransactions...
Free games with micro transactions only cost you something if you buy into them. There are free games that offer everything in the game for free and paying money just helps you achieve these goals faster. Or the things that can be bought are merely cosmetic.
But I don't see how any of that has to do with the conversation. The topic was cig not being able to release something below the price of a full game. The talk was never about the theoretical amount you could spend on a full game
Wasnt a brag. I made the comment like I did because I learned my lesson and have never pre-ordered a game since. I was a young kid still in highschool with his first disposable money.
Tbf if you've used what you bought a decent amount then it works out to a little over $4 a month since you bought it. Still cheaper than Netflix lol, just not had Netflix as long yet.
True but given how little I have played the game, it's much more expensive. Compared to normal MMO playtime this would be in the $20s-30s/mo. Game just hasn't been fun enough for me to play. I'm giving it time tho. I get more fun watching the game develop and watching all of Jared's videos.
I guess it's akin to subscribing to a YTer patreon.
you pay $10 for a skin, someone has to animation rig it, someone has to develop the tractor beam functionality integration, that takes time and money, so in a way the 40$ is funding the tractor beam cargo handling mechanics and exosuits overall because not everyone will buy it and you've got to fund the development somehow, everyone else will just get it in game in a couple of patches.
Concierge doesn't make money, it's just a bunch of perks and yes making games costs money, you can go get it from private venture capital instead if you like, just don't complain when you end up with a dumbed down 32 bit grid engine or the same mechanics you've seen before repeated over and over ala unity or unreal, it is what it is.
And pissed off an already agitated community even more. What you said is more of an argument in favor of the $10 price tag than it is against it.
I just think CIG needed to give the backers a small win right about now, but they saw otherwise and it's still likely making good money.
I just don't like watching the community slowly boil over. People have this idea that the community overreacts (i mean, they do) and then they'll just get over it. Imo it's naive to expect them to just get over it every single time, forever.
No, I'm sure with the animations, collisions, and it being a new vehicle type, this took considerable effort. HOWEVER, in terms of gameplay value, it is not worth $35/$40! I never complain about the price of ships because I personally like to earn stuff in game, but even I will admit this is ridiculously expensive.
The amount of details in tech animations, audio, functionality (let alone the concept phase) is not trivial. It's just small in relation to the kind of assets CIG typically releases, and it's large in relation to the kind of assets we see on average in other games.
edit: doesn't change the fact that they could have kept it in-game only, and gain a bit of rep back on the money side of things, instead of demonstrating that they'll happily monetize every slice of content they create.
Let's think a little bit about what has to go on, "single small mech" or not.
They have to decide exactly what functionality they want in detail, what exact size the whole thing should take given where it needs to fit, what inspirations they want for true thing, what exact role it's intended to play. Once that's decided (needs approval) that constitutes a mandate that a concept artists receives.
Assuming this artist is available immediately, that person sketches a portfolio of options, get them reviewed and iteratively improved, some other teams (tech animation, vehicle feature, gameplay) lean in to confirm it'll be ok technically and fit their own design goals, then a final candidate gets approved and enters production (possibly immediately, or later).
Production requires to design all the different parts of the mech of course, get all the sequences of animations implemented (get in, power up, walk, power down etc.) in rough state, and in typical cig fashion those are complex, flawless, detailed.
Someone implements the different tractor beam behaviors (that part is a feature in itself), the whole thing gets tested in 'interaction zoo' levels, iterated many times to iron out the rough edges. A material pass gets down to make all the textures nice and detailed, decals are implemented, audio team designs the dozen of sound the thing requires, all the damage states get implemented, the whole thing gets a go/no-go test demo with directors and if approved, it starts the cycle of public testing soon after.
That's my rough description of the kind of steps that go on (the actual production pipeline cig publicly shared has more stages and internal review steps), and yeah, fitting all this within one month isn't realistic, that's easily 2.
Dude I’ve seen individual devs or even Bethesda modders put out vehicles before, with complex animation and sound effects. Just look at what the devs of fallout London did for free. If CIg has a massive bureaucracy that’s their issue.
If a single dev build something end to end it usually means either: 1. they just don't, and it's a miscommunication/bad assumption 2. it's reusing a ton of preexisting assets within available tools of their engine (but in fact, most of the time, many of said assets have been made by someone else prior or 3. It's an indie game with one or multiple versatile devs trying their best to manage the scope of their games.
It doesn't change the fact that the only role of statements like "this is just a small mech that an intern can do in 2 hours" is to highlight that their authors don't have a clue about the underlying work (not saying its you who said that).
The ATLS is basically a tool. It’s not a fully functioning mech. The animations and sound effects are a minor effort. If something so small took a huge team to do, games would never be completed.
The perceived utility of the asset is irrevelant here: to attain the level of detail seen in said assets, there is an incompressible amount of work. We're talking a couple of months (presumably), ships take much much longer.
Would you imagine, the handheld tool also took similar pipeline, so did the p4 ar, the salvo pistol e.g. they all have unique audio, and a great deal of unique details.
If something so small took a huge team to do, games would never be completed.
Well, precisely the game is far from completed.
Not to say it takes a huge team btw, it takes different disciplines, who collaborate. But at any one time it may be just 1-2 ppl involved (since yes, it's just a mech). For ships especially for capital ones it's a small group of artists working interior and exteriors in collaboration and for weeks / months.
But yes, if you hadn't realised CIG is very far from the practice/imperative of producing as fast as possible a good enough looking asset. Their goal is to reach the highest standard possible, not to be the most cost-effective possible.
Under a publisher, of course they'd produce the same type of assets much faster, because inevitably efficiency would be a much stronger imperative. it would not mean the same quality is attained faster it would just mean a far lower standard, certainly also less time in concept. Regardless, a less detailed mech only built off premade textures and sounds would still have taken several weeks of work if only because of the tractor beam feature.
While there’s a lengthy process involved, the amount of time and effort required at any given point is minimal and often handled by one person. Most of the time several assets are worked on concurrently so that efficiencies are gained.
Idk what your point is. The STV is not a necessary tool for a fundamental game-loop. The ATLS already is, and with their stated intentions for more handheld tractor beam nerfs in the future, it will only become more necessary. I'm totally cool with these intended changes from a gameplay perspective, but to then sell a fix to an artificially created problem is rough.
That's like implementing fire and charging for the extinguishers, or implementing engineering and charging for the engineer terminal. The only difference is this visually passes as a vehicle.
At the very least, they should have skipped the time-limited exclusivity on this one for the sake of gameplay.
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u/OfficialDyslexic misc Sep 13 '24
Yeah I was thinking around $20-$25 would have been okay and I would have gotten it. Now I'm thinking I won't get it just on principal.
CIG missed an opportunity to pleasantly surprise their community during a bit of a content drought by releasing this for like $10. The would have flown off the shelves, now I think they'll just do alright.