First off, I am very impressed with the last video Kludger posted.

Seems to me the combat dynamics and onboard systems management is suitably in depth. Here's hoping they keep up with the momentum.

Second, I never bought into the supposition that their Alpha pricing was merely to limit access to the development process towards a more mature demographic.

I didn't want to say it then because a lot of you are convinced that the main intention is not primarily monetary motivated, but to me, it sounds like just another money spinning sales pitch. However good their product is besides the point. Let's call a spade for what it is and not something else.

I saw an interview with the lead guy during the early days of the Alpha and he was absolutely swooning over the financial subscription of the Alpha. The way he was talking, he had $$ icons popping out of his eyeballs. It sure didn't sound like the guy was trying to moderate the amount of folks trying to get early access. He was just tickled pink because he was swimming in money and that's always a nice feeling when the market have faith in your product or your sales hype.

It was and always had been geared towards funding the development process...the more subscription cash, the better. After all, it is Kickstarter. And who can blame them ? I don't.

It's hard not to look across the pond over at Star Citizen and see how ridiculously oversubscribed that thing is and not think to yourself, well why can't I have a piece of that action with my own product if it is good enough.

A lot of customers are willing to jump on the spacesim development bandwagon atm and the climate is definitely bullish. As a current frontrunner developer of that genre, it only makes sense for them to cash as much and as early as they can muster. Right now, Star Citizen has nothing to show for except for a bunch of pretty renditions. Elite, on the other hand, well.....if I were them I do the same thing they are doing now before SC ramps up and raises the bar.

Until a week ago I would have objected, now I wholeheartedly agree.

I'm pretty much over the alpha/early access #%&*$#.
I've got so many games with "potential" that still seem to be very far from what's so attractive about the idea of the game, that I have little faith in these things.
Just not worth keeping up with the press releases, promises, sneak peak videos, forum drama (not talking about the SHQ group, I mean official forums)...it gets old. Hurry up and wait. Hype with no outlet for release.
I trust you guys to keep me informed about Elite, SC, and even MWO which I play all the time, but I just take at face value based on RIGHT NOW, not "upcoming...". LOL

The crowd funding thing is fine for some, a BAD idea for others like me. I have little faith that most of these games will ever see their potential. In the meantime, I get sick of them and may never see the final product because of that. I have almost no faith in DayZ, Rust and some other small titles that I've bought into, that they will ever be what they were expected to be. Hell, Rust doesn't even know what it is.
In the end, I think the crowd funding idea is poisonous for a gaming, at least large scale gaming. Probably find for little platformers. It's good for devs who want to get paid while working on a game, but I have little faith the games will ever get finished properly. I'm glad I never bought into Miner Wars. They dropped that project FAR from what they said it would be and moved on to Space Engineers, after years of promises and development.

Can't say I can understand why folks are plunking down $100+ for rough drafts of games that are years from being realized. I put $40 each towards SC and Elite. Anything beyond that doesn't make sense to me.

'Promoters' we call them, and not in a complimentary fashion. It's part of the business landscape. Always have been. I have been in the corporate world too long.

The thing is you may have a great product but the other guy won't get off his chair and plonk a wad of cash unless you put on the bullsh*t hat and do your sales spin. People tend to get sold to any idea or an investment by fanciful talk more than anything else.

As they say, honesty is the best policy but advertising pays. LOL

Why don't you come back to 7 Days with Feetwet, Snap and myself ? For an Alpha that game has a lot going for it. We are restarting our little town after the latest 7.8 patch. Night after night we are hunkered down scared and hungry.

Of the ones I've bought, that's the best progressing game. As with Rust, I get frustrated with the game updates requiring starting over. I hate losing progress. It's a little on the frustrating/stressful side of gaming for my nerves at the moment. I'm just not in the mood to be chased by Z's while trying to build and figure out crafting. LOL

Awww come on RK. You can bunk with us. Other than Feetwet who is the most resourceful trailblazer amongst us, none of us really build anything from the ground up. We just spawn in and try to make our way towards Feetwet's before nightfall. It's always better to have a team. You should see the little complex we build in the last patch. I have a huge fortress South of Feetwet and Snap's and we linked both via an underground tunnel. We were so busy establishing a stronghold we havent's even scratch the surface in terms of map exploration.

I admit the game can be stressful when starting out when you have little equipment and provisions but if any easier the game will be a yawn fest.

One thing you have to remember with these crowd funded games is that without the crowd funding they wouldnt exist. Without the initial hype investment from the community there would be no starcitizen or ED. It sucks that they drag us along like they do (especially SC where they have shown maybe 30 seconds of dogfight gameplay total even though they are releaseing DF this week...) but anyways without those people who plunk down a few hundred / thousand for a game noone can play yet we would all not be able to play because those games would not exist.

SO at the end of the day even if 10% of these crowd funded games finish with something good it is a win for the gaming community IMHO.

Crowd funding is definitely a crap shoot.

Rust is fun but the community is poisonous and apparently they have to rewrite everything to make any significant progress. That one may stall for quite some time.

Day Z Standalone, I still have not found a dang can opener ;-). I may need to give this one another try but I got tired of starving to death.

Star Citizen is killing it on information distribution but I am starting to get a little frustrated with no dogfight module. I am willing to give this developer, who I know, the benefit of the doubt but come on.

Mechwarrior Online is a fun game that I got more than my money worth out of. It was the first game to pull me into the SimHQ multiplayer community. (Face it, the post for Arma multiplayer are intimidating as hell).
But I can only smash the same opponents driving the same mechs on the same maps for the same rewards for so long before it gets old. So combine the lack of depth so far with my disappointment in the future roadmap and I think I am done there.

Im loving 7 Days to Die. It was a $30 dollar buy in for me and I am approaching 100 hours on it. The great thing about this game is that it is constantly updating and expanding. This has kept it fresh and me returning patch after patch. The problem is there is no endgame. So when the updates stop does my enjoyment stop, I don't know. Hopefully they are working endgame or something equivalent.

So these last 2 years (my first as a crowd funder) I have learned to be much more careful with where I dump my money. I can't say that I have regretted any of them but I am more thoughtful now.

S

Very nicely said. +1

Elite's high price for Alpha was set that way during the very start, and one of the oddities of Kickstarter is that once someone places a pledge on that tier the owner of the project cannot change it and now they've been stuck with it ever since, well at least until beta starts. That's how it always seemed to me, so they decided to add a bit more value to the alpha to give it more long term value, although afaik no-one asked for it.

I suspect we'll be seeing Alpha 4 soon, within a week or two is my guestimate, and its going to be focussing on travel and trade, so we should hopefully see the hyperspace effects. Even in Alpha state its one of the best games I jhave played this year, the others so far have all been crowdfunded games (excluding Il2:BOS, although with their pre-order and early access it seemed similar).

Premium beta backer are in for a nice surprise.
All the Alpha single player content has been released for premium backers.
D'loading now.

I'm a premium beta guy...and I'm having a blast setting up just the right HOTAS setup with the alpha single player content!

Here is newsletter #21:

#21

Very impressive, last Alpha on May 15th, first real Premium beta on May 30th.

Sorry, how much for the Premium Beta again ? And how much do I get to play with that ?

All info here...

https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous...6400.1399277517

The more you wait the better it gets.

***k me. For asking $150 to access the Beta, I will wait.

Just bought a new hydration pack from Source Outdoors with all the bells and whistles + shipping for less than that.....just to put some stuff into perspective

A six-pack of Heineken for 150 bucks? Or maybe hydration packs are different where I live?

-C-

Alpha 4.0 has been released with trading, hyperspace, super-cruise and more star systems.

A video from one of the alpha backers showing a hyperspace jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIPVegyKksI

I have to say having played this myself for the past hour I am absolutely amazed at how it is all coming together. The actual space backdrop is based on known galaxy map data.