Well, I am pretty much into space games. As someone who insanely loved Freespace 1 & 2, played Freelancer a lot on Hamburg City Servers, brought a lot time in the X-Series and never played Eve, how much money does this game cost?
The whole monetization confuses me pretty much, so I would be glad if someone could shed some light on it. Many thanks.
(Also, what's the current state of the game?)
Posted Apr 4, 2014, 11:11 PM UTC
$40 is all you need to spend
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/store/316-aurora-mr
that gives you the game and access to alpha and beta.
[deleted]
The base game is $30, with a $40 option for pre-release access, from now until launch, of certain aspects of the game as they reach an "alpha" state. The first gameplay release should be out mid-late this month.
There are other packages for collectors and people that want to throw money at the project, but that's not going to be present post launch.
So, what are all these ships about? Is this "exclusive" stuff or just a shortcut for early-supporter?
No ship is exclusive, they're shortcut rewards for early supporters/collectors.
Well some of the pledge ships will probably be extremely hard to get your hands on, even if they're not technically exclusive I would guess. I mean it's not like your average ship dealer is going to be selling Vanduul Scythes.
Your average Vanduul ship dealer would though, just need to know where to find them.
You will be able to buy every ship ingame with ingame credits you've earned. A preliminary guess from Chris was about 60 hours of gameplay to buy a Constellation.
Help me out (since I am right now on mobile), what kind of ship is the constellation? How expensive is it?
It's the (currently) $225 freighter/space superiority/everything ship.
It's a 4 person ship, has two manned turrets and several forward facing guns. Also has a small fighter (p-52 merlin) attached that someone can take off in and fly/fight with you. To pledge and get the ship is $225 and the game package with a Connie is $275 which comes with various physical items (spaceship model, special silver box, map, hard bound book, ship shaped USB Drive, etc).
Supposably, nothing is going to be exclusive period.
To answer the last part of your question, not much at the moment. If you pledged for a package right now, at the cheapest it would run you $40 bucks (if you wanted to check it out right now). We have the "hangar module" which allows you to go into your hangar and look at the ship you've pledged for (if you pledged for the $40 package you'd see an Aurora MR). You can get into it, sit in the seat or lay down in the bed in the rear of the ship. April 10th they will unveil the dogfighting module. This will be the module that will allow players to actually play part of the game. It will only have the Hornet (possibly the 300i/Aurora.) If you don't have a Hornet, one will be provided for you. The release of the DFM is unknown, it should be shortly after the unveiling.
That actually sounds reasonable. I am really looking forward to some intense dogfighting (especially since X Rebirth failed on everything. Now economy is even shit.) - thank you for your quick response!
Rubs hands together.
Alright, here we go!
Basically until shortly before the game is released, they will be doing what they are currently doing. They sell game packages and ships to people interested in buying them in order to raise money via crowdfunding. The game is ENTIRELY crowdfunded. We are funding it.
During beta sometime they will stop selling all of the ships and ship packages except for 1.
The package that is currently the $30 Aurora MR package, will become "the game". That is what people will buy when they buy the game. At that point it will probably be more like $50-60 (in line with other AAA PC games).
Monetization looks like this:
Purchasable UEC. People will be allowed to buy a limited and capped amount of UEC each month to supplement their income in the game if they don't have much time to play.
Merchandise.
Some microtransactions (extra character slots and MAYBE some cosmetic stuff). Nothing major.
Additional singleplayer campaigns. They will be creating more singleplayer campaigns after SQ42 which people will be able to buy.
Expansions. They will do regular, continual content updates like any persistent universe type of game but occasionally they will release large scale expansions (to add in a new playable race for example).
They will end up raising WAY more money than they need for initial development of the game. They have been putting money away for some time now to help them with long term costs (server infrastructure and operation is a big one).
They have created their own motion capture and performance capture studio as one of the stretch goals. This can be rented out to other game developers and make a sizeable amount of money.
Last but probably most important... New players! A lot of people won't get into the game until it is fully released... and new people will constantly join afterwards.
All of that said, you buy the $40 Aurora MR+ package now and you get alpha access, beta access, Squadron 42 (50 mission singleplayer campaign), and Star Citizen and never HAVE to spend anymore money. :)
Fair enough! thank you for your detailed insight.
No problem! :)
How will the singleplayer be? Something like instanced Multiplayer or really like Freelancer, where the story existend local and the real shit was going on online?
The singleplayer campaign will exist as almost a separate game. It takes place prior to the events in the Persistent Universe but will have a significant impact on your character.
Squadron 42 is a military campaign and you will be in the UEE Navy, this has impacts on your standing with various groups when you finish the campaign and muster out into the wide open universe. Plus, you will have earned some credits in your military service so you will have those too.
It should be noted that you can skip the singleplayer campaign.
Did that answer your question?
Basically you make your character and then you decide if you want to join the military for citizenship or pay a fee. If you pay the fee your skipping the single-player campaign and going right in the the Multiplayer freelancer game.
If you join the military you get ~40 missions where you play out a tour of duty as a fighter pilot and can't leave till your service is complete. After it's complete you might get contacts and hookups for items and jobs from the people and places you've met during your tour of duty.
It's going to be more like Wing Commander where you are in the military flying hornets and other fighters and probably a bomber or two. It will be released episodically and having branching missions with a winning and losing side in each episodic drop. We originally saw 40-60 missions thrown around for length but that may change now that it's episodic we don't know.
So you do get a starting ship? I had heard that you don't get a ship to start off with unless you pledge, and in order to get one you had to earn money by either completing the Squadron 42 campaign or by flying missions for other people using their ships.
Yes, you do. :)
I chatted with u/dace about this the other day and this is what he came up with:
From Ben: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2016111/#Comment_2016111
Also CR during the June livestream (watch from ~14:00-18:00 or so):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNsFUErNICA
I had not heard of this before, do you have a source where I can read more about this, if there is any more to read?
There's not really a lot more info on it, they have just confirmed that they will be creating more singleplayer campaigns. The only other tidbit I have really heard is that when/if new playable races were introduced, they would likely have their own singleplayer campaign.
It was confirmed very recently here:
http://youtu.be/9ZcFTKpPA_U?t=24m2s
Cool, thanks!
No problem! :)
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