That is pretty much exactly what they are shooting for.
Even the MMO thing wont be an Eve style MMO. It will be more like COOP WC4 or COOP Privateer. They are trying to design a system that minimizes griefing and mobbing.
They are going to have a lot to live up to this much hype but to be honest this will be the ONLY space sim (eve is no sim) that allows you to fly Capital ships in a persistent MP environment so that alone gets my money.
If the SP campaign isn't as good as WC3 and 4, forget it. It better be improved over those, or the haters will descend. And it better not be 5 stupid hours' worth, either! The big space sims came from the days when SP games were 20+ hrs, so this better be well over 10, preferably 15+.
45 Missions is certainly 5+ hours, more like 20+ hours or more. My only hope is the mission tree is dynamic like WC 1--not linear like WC 2.
Dynamic mission trees are what made WC 1 so replayable to this day. WC 3 had a similarly dynamic system as well and I think WC 4 does also.
I can't wait to have Carrier vs Carrier battles... daring raids on them where you take a Destroyer and try and board them. Imagine the firefight on them! Sending in a squad of 50 guys to take down 250+. Man, it'll be awesome! (assuming they allow that many players on a server).
They did some QA stuff and one of the questions was about the SP campaign. They want to make it dynamic based on 1) if you made your objective 2) you made the bonus objective 3) which capital ships survive on both sides.
They have left the door open at RSI for a short period to make up for the time the site was off air. After that... You can still pledge for ships and goodies for a further 12 months but no longer get the "lifetime insurance" for your ship's hull it will be for 12 months only. Original pledgers can still get the goods at campain prices for the year too.
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Lifetime insurance? WTF is THAT? So I can spend months and months and lots of REAL money getting a great ship only to have a gang of bullies jump on me and make me lose it??? %#^$ THAT!
I've driven a lot of racing sims, but I've never had to worry about banal things like running out of funding mid-season because my sponsor went Chapter 11, or my driver getting suspended for cursing at a reporter, or my crew chief quitting!
Just as I never play "dead is dead" in my sim campaigns (because I don't have the time to waste restarting over and over again because a brain-dead wingman collides with me trying to get the same kill as me), there are limits to what I will accept.
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There will still be the sq42 50 missions (+16 special ops mission pack) where you wont have to worry about death.
As for the insurance. You will be able to buy insurance in game also for a price related to how expensive your ship is. If you die you will get a new ship (minus all the upgrades and cargo you had).
The lifetime insurance thing for pledger is really not all that great. It was just a small incentive to get people to give extra money. (and it worked well at that.)
Also, they are trying to make a system where you can opt out of pvp play. So if you dont want to be griefed you can set the game to only match you up with friends or just AI. If that still does not appeal you can always play the game on a private server and hack in whatever you want.
Yes, that's also the impression that I get from "Lifetime insurance" feature. If you loose a ship that you bought which is better or diferent than the ship you start with you'll return to the game with the starting ship which for pleagers will be the ship that the players pleaged - for example I pleage $30 which means that my pleage ship is the Aurora so if I loose a ship that's diferent/better than my initial Aurora (for example a Hornet) I loose that ship and get back to the game "earning" a new Aurora, if I don't own any more ships that is! I read rumours that there's a "weaker" ship than the Aurora which is the ship that the player's that didn't pleage (or only pleage $10) star with - but that's not confirmed which means that the Aurora could still be in fact the "normal" starting ship. Probably this "loose your destroyed ship" isn't a bad idea at all since this pehaps will keep some or many players from attacking others since there's the "real risk" of loosing the "better" ship that cost many in-game hard earned credits, but who knows?
Anyway, if being able to buy insurance for your ships together with the possibility (already confirmed) that you can purchase multiple ships (not only being able to own one single ship like in Freelancer or Privateer) and store them in a "garage" than loosing a ship won't be a very annoying issue (at least not so annoying).
Also, like Master said there will be options within the game where "you can opt out of pvp play" but notice that will only work within 'core' or 'main/central systems' which are supposed to be heavily "policed" by the UEE Navy/law enforcement agencies within the Star Citizen universe (these include the Sol system and other adjacent UEE core systems) but once you get out of these systems into the UEE 'border systems' and even perhaps other civilization's systems (such as Xi'an, Banu, Vanduul, etc...) the "opt out of pvp play" won't work (independently of what PvP option you have selected you can can be targeted/intercepted by other human players) and of course together with this the margin of profit (doing missions and/or trade) will be much higher in those 'border systems' than will be in the 'core/main systems' (mainly due to the tax rates being much higher there).
Finally, I want to say that I'm in fact much more interested in the Single Player (and Co-Op) 'Squadron 42' "Wing Commander style gameplay" part than in the 'Star Citizen' part and when or if I decide to play the 'Star Citizen' part I'll probably play it in a private server with some of my friends.
Yes, that's also the impression that I get from "Lifetime insurance" feature. If you loose a ship that you bought which is better or diferent than the ship you start with you'll return to the game with the starting ship which for pleagers will be the ship that the players pleaged - for example I pleage $30 which means that my pleage ship is the Aurora so if I loose a ship that's diferent/better than my initial Aurora (for example a Hornet) I loose that ship and get back to the game "earning" a new Aurora, if I don't own any more ships that is! I read rumours that there's a "weaker" ship than the Aurora which is the ship that the player's that didn't pleage (or only pleage $10) star with - but that's not confirmed which means that the Aurora could still be in fact the "normal" starting ship. Probably this "loose your destroyed ship" isn't a bad idea at all since this pehaps will keep some or many players from attacking others since there's the "real risk" of loosing the "better" ship that cost many in-game hard earned credits, but who knows?
Anyway, if being able to buy insurance for your ships together with the possibility (already confirmed) that you can purchase multiple ships (not only being able to own one single ship like in Freelancer or Privateer) and store them in a "garage" than loosing a ship won't be a very annoying issue (at least not so annoying).
Also, like Master said there will be options within the game where "you can opt out of pvp play" but notice that will only work within 'core' or 'main/central systems' which are supposed to be heavily "policed" by the UEE Navy/law enforcement agencies within the Star Citizen universe (these include the Sol system and other adjacent UEE core systems) but once you get out of these systems into the UEE 'border systems' and even perhaps other civilization's systems (such as Xi'an, Banu, Vanduul, etc...) the "opt out of pvp play" won't work (independently of what PvP option you have selected you can can be targeted/intercepted by other human players) and of course together with this the margin of profit (doing missions and/or trade) will be much higher in those 'border systems' than will be in the 'core/main systems' (mainly due to the tax rates being much higher there).
Finally, I want to say that I'm in fact much more interested in the Single Player (and Co-Op) 'Squadron 42' "Wing Commander style gameplay" part than in the 'Star Citizen' part and when or if I decide to play the 'Star Citizen' part I'll probably play it in a private server with some of my friends.
I'm seeing bits of EVE in what you're saying. 'Insurance', 'policed areas', 'core systems'(high sec), 'border systems'(low sec, null sec). I guess that's to be expected I suppose. Hopefully Star Citizen's twist on things will be an improvement although in regards to insurance, at least in the EVE universe, it only really pays out on cheaper, lower tech hulls. Anything tech 2 or fully decked out and you're going to lose money regardless of the insurance. I'm interested to see how things go.
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Interesting! So it means that if your ship is destroyed you will loose it unless you have your ship insured (unlike Freelancer for example, where if you lose a ship you'll re-start or re-enter the game with a ship identical to the one you lost but without the cargo). Like it was already said the ships that players have pleaged until 26th of November will have a "Lifetime insurance" so in theory you will never loose that or those pleaged ships (the only way to "lose" those 'lifetime insured ships' seems to be by selling them). But it's also interesting to know (after reading the "Insurance FAQ") that there are 3 types of Insurances - Ship Insurance, Upgrade Insurance and Cargo Insurance and the "Lifetime insurance" is only a Ship Insurance! So if a player that have a "Lifetime insurance" for a ship but doesn't have any other insurances and looses the ship covered by the "Lifetime insurance" that same player will receive a new ship (identical to the insured one) but will nevertheless loose any upgrades or cargo that the ship had at the time it was destroyed or lost.
Also "interesting" is that players that don't have ships with "Lifetime insurance" and only own one ship which doesn't have any ship insurance and then loose that ship and if there isn't enough money to buy a new ship than those same players will have to take on contracts from NPCs (or even other human players) where the contractor will "borrow" a ship the player for the duration of the contract and that player must keep doing this until he gets enought money to purchase his own ship - I admit that I'm very curious to see how this will work within the game itself!