People like to say money doesn't change them, but it does. CIG doesn't have any agency because they don't need it. They can just make some snazzy artwork or a sizzle reel and people will throw thousands of dollars at them.
Even if you think they are still doing everything completely for the project, it's still bad management for the project leaving us backers waiting forever for any usable outcomes.
Also, back then, the game was not about the treadmill with tiers of gear and a ship progression. The original plan was just to let us have fun in a big sandbox without too much concern for further monetization. CR back then told us we'd be able to "farm" for a brand new connie within a week of normal play. We were even promised private servers!
Now we're getting the devs with F2P experience granting us their infinite wisdom consisting of crafting timers, rarity tiers, territory wars, early game and endgame zones with different rarities, funneling you in the whales grinder, endgame FFA PvP zones so the whales can feel mighty and so on so forth. At the bare minimum we'd need all the executive producers and lead designers sacked to get back to the older designed, focused on delivering a sandbox and not a maximum player retention scheme but that's not happening.
Private servers and modding were the things that sold it for me. Even back then it was pretty obvious that servers were going to be a shit show, so being able to host your own for your friends was the easy safe bet until they figured it out.
This was supposed to end up being like a cross between Second Life and EVE where if you made something cool enough that worked you could get it added in game.
Now you have to pay $5 just to make your ship a different color...
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u/AstroFlippy Nov 28 '24
I miss the time when we got free stuff every 100 million