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Could this game eventually "kill" Star Citizen?


aliensalmon

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Okay, it's time for a topic a bit more crazy than usual from me. (I enjoy talking about this game because just like all of you, I want to see it succeed.) This topic is taken from the Steam boards of a game similar to Dual Universe.

 

Do you think this game could eventually "kill" Star Citizen? How would it be able to do so?

 

Star Citizen is still unfinished, but it still has more of a playerbase than DU. I think if the devs add a little bit more stuff (such as introducing new "gameplay loops" that everyone's been talking about here), it could rival and potentially beat Star Citizen in terms of popularity and ratings.

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The year was 2012. I was in a wormhole alliance in EvE online.  The hot topic lately between corp mates was this new game being crowd funded at it was getting a lot of money. One particular guy in my Corp was adamant that Star Citizen would kill EvE when it would be released. Almost 10 years ago to the day. Time flies.

 

51581658-e5fd-4c29-a57b-8b8e7a2ae514_tex

 

Edited by VandelayIndustries
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I don't play a star citizen. But I wish all those players who regularly buy ships for 400 euros that their games will eventually be released.

 

But I do not really know if SC has an interest in release, it will be contrary to its economic model.

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3 hours ago, aliensalmon said:

Do you think this game could eventually "kill" Star Citizen? How would it be able to do so?

 

Not a chance. For one, Apples and Oranges and SC has actual funding, even when it is minimal for the scale of the project, and a considerable userbase in accounts alone which I expect is about five times what DU has.

And no, SC players do not "frequently buy $400 ships". SC players have invested some money an dwill "exchange" their current ships for new ones on occasion from credits by "selling" their ships into a buyback program. SC requires no mmore than a single one time $45 purchase and you can buy everything else you want in game really.

 

CIG also blows NQ out of the water in the marketing department. Finally, keep in mind both games have been in development for about the same time now, with SC having a bit of a head start.

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Short answer - yes. They just need to nail the next few big updates, do some balancing, find a decent sized marketing budget(this is crucial), and then (assuming they get the required player base, which is dependent on the marketing) they need to ramp up the size of their development team. 
 

This game is in a similar state to where eve was before release (in some ways ahead in some ways behind), so I’m sure it can find similar levels of success. Also it’s not like star citizen is going to release anytime soon.

 

 

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I could see myself picking the finished Dual Universe over the finished Star Citizen. But that's because of my tastes, I don't mind simulatey spreadsheet'ish games.... Whereas SC allways looked gimmicky to me.

 

That being said, I doubt that in the end there will be more players here than in SC, it's just not how the market demograhpics are: there is tens if not hundreds of millions of potential customers for an action filled space game, whereas simulator/sandbox can rather hope to have a public somewhere in the ballpark of hundredthousands to millions.

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11 hours ago, aliensalmon said:

Okay, it's time for a topic a bit more crazy than usual from me. (I enjoy talking about this game because just like all of you, I want to see it succeed.) This topic is taken from the Steam boards of a game similar to Dual Universe.

 

Do you think this game could eventually "kill" Star Citizen? How would it be able to do so?

 

Star Citizen is still unfinished, but it still has more of a playerbase than DU. I think if the devs add a little bit more stuff (such as introducing new "gameplay loops" that everyone's been talking about here), it could rival and potentially beat Star Citizen in terms of popularity and ratings.

Only if it died laughing!  SC is on a completely different budget.  It has hundreds of people working on it and a lot of those people are creating actual *content* for the game, so players rock up and have a large, detailed universe to explore and a wide range of things to actually do.  It also has NPCs so it doesn't rely on other players being there to provide something to 'play against'.  There is no way a small studio like NQ is ever going to be able to create content at anything like the same rate, particularly not when it is still focussed on the core technology and trying to get the server costs down, something which SC probably doesn't have to worry about at all!

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I might have missed something lately in development but DU was on track to indeed push out alot of other games but well, some very logical moves, to the developers, later we have crash landed with the remains of post apocalypic 0.23

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I'd say it was more a matter of reality catching up with NQ in that their projections for what they would do more or less fell apart. JC lived in a reality distortion bubble worse than Steve Job's ever was. /s

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This game could kill SC if #1 NQ actually wanted to make money, and #2 they actually had space battles.

 

The biggest issue with SC is they see cool player suggestions and they add most of them into the game. You could play as a garbage man picking up actual items off the floor or running parts around a ship and doing engineering but at the end of the day most fleets wont have 200 people on a ship at once with another 200-300 people who also live on the same ship to run 3 shifts, 401K, insurance premium, parts, labor, manual everything, and its hella more complex then it needs to be. If you like living a virtual life experience filled with mini games and total grind cool on you.

 

But if DU was a bit more streamlined it could be competition if NQ actually wanted to make money via actually brining in and keeping subs or actually selling skins and things in a fluff shop or aftermarket player scripts, skins, etc. DU isnt as much of a game as it is a slave labor mining colony sim not because that is the theme but because NQ does not make a game vs a tech demo.

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The short answer is no, it can't. Not now, not in 10 years. Probably never. 

 

Even if it were polished, bug free, and could actually scale technically, DU is a niche game, apparently by design. 

Even if it had all features like PvP done, its version of combat is not going to have mainstream appeal, which you need to "kill" a game like SC. 

Even if NQ had a sudden investment of another $20 million, they wouldn't be able to erase the last 7 years of tech debt and problems.

 

Hell, even if NQ had $1 billion for marketing, they wouldn't be "killing" anything soon...because $1 billion can buy you new users, but it can't buy lower churn rates...

 

If they attract 5 million players tomorrow (and magically can scale to handle them), they wouldn't keep them for long. Long term, it would make little difference to the health of the company. 

 

Why do I believe that DU won't fix all its problems and scale...? Because you judge a studio and product by its history, not the value of its "great ideas". 

 

Ideas are very cheap. A good idea is worth about $0.05. The execution is what actually matters -- and NQ doesn't have a history of executing their "grand ideas". The last 7 years have communicated one thing very clearly: that NQ can't build DU the way it was presented.

 

That's not because NQ's devs are bad, it's because the idea was bad. It was always half-baked and overly ambitious. Some of the things JC claimed were never going to be plausible without the magic "cutting-edge" tech that never materialized. 

 

It might become a decent game one day, don't get me wrong....but it won't be the "civilization sandbox" people like to imagine -- and won't be competing with AAA studios in this reality. 

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On 12/14/2021 at 12:56 PM, Shredder said:

The question was ‘could’ not ‘will it’.

It could have beaten StarCitizen and Eve by the standards and reveries of the time, as it promised a lot of dreams along with that content, which had attracted players from those and other games.
BUT: Right now DualUniverse has very different goals in terms of how the game is played and what you can or can't do to have fun in the game. Means to the question, back then it could have been better, right now it's far from it and what will be in the future remains to be seen, especially 2022 and the new roadmap will be very interesting. right now I don't see any game content or mechanics that stand out in any way to interest and retain a mass of players long term.

 

Briefly:
earlier - yes
current -
no
future - very unlikely

 

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ROFLMAO.

 

DU might have to actually be a game first.

 

SC has an army of A-list devs. DU doesn't (on either point).

 

BTW, atm, I like DU better because I can have exactly the ship I want. And if my whim changes, I can have that ship too. And it doesn't cost real money.

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On 12/14/2021 at 1:54 PM, Warlander said:

if #1 NQ actually wanted to make money

Be careful what you ask for, you may not like the results.  I only see two somewhat realistic paths for NQ to make money w/ DU.  First would be a bottom up redesign to put 'game' back into the project.  Second would be going pay-to-win F2P.

 

My proverbial money is on the first option because it sure as hell won't be going toward the second.

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2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

Be careful what you ask for, you may not like the results.  I only see two somewhat realistic paths for NQ to make money w/ DU.  First would be a bottom up redesign to put 'game' back into the project.  Second would be going pay-to-win F2P.

 

My proverbial money is on the first option because it sure as hell won't be going toward the second.

 

They could Charge a sub and have Premium tiers for $5+ each tier that gives up to 25% tax breaks or up to 5 free tiles and charge 25 a month for T5 sub and bank.

 

They could sell parts for a month before it goes live to the server so they can make more money to develop more parts and pay more people with that money to make things needed to the game since they have said before they dont have the budget.

 

They could sell fluff items, tron die pigments for $1 per use for each color and since you need 5-6 for the avatar thats $6 they didnt have before for customization, XXS utility avatar addons, pets, skins, etc they could be making money off of instead of recruiting friends in some kind of pyramid scheme people would have bought if they had an option.

 

They could litterally sell resources if they wanted to as gold farmers are doing the same thing and they sell 1 mil quanta for $5.

 

Although the last part I wouldnt do but NQ needs to make money and with all the beta keys out there its more a free to play game right now than a Sub model game and NQ does need to make money to pay bills, hire people, and finish the game. Customization or utility things like avatar suits, skins, tron dyes, etc are harmless vs selling burner ships or different exclusive elements.

 

Not making money doing this does not help the game and not having pay to develop elements can only help the game even if it is a head start with parts 1 month before they go live. Or they could continue not making money they otherwise could be making right now and using it to improve the game.

 

But I would go as far to say that NQ should consider opening a second server that is P2W as there is no downside to doing so along with a PvE server for those who just want a chill place to build and explore the game as all 3 types of having a PvP/P2W, and PvE could all be lucrative in their own ways and not having options cuts off segments of gaming populations they could be banking on. Sure its not one single shard or 3 single shard environments but having money to develop the game is better than having a small team that seems to only be working on reactive punishments than actually making something fun to play.

Edited by Warlander
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30 minutes ago, Warlander said:

opening a second server that is P2W as there is no downside to doing so

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought they were trying to reduce server costs, not double them.  Even if we're talking about VMs auto-negotiating between the two realms it would only add to server cost to even attempt, much less maintain that state.  If anything, I would think an offline creative mode instead of tandem realms would fill your stated goal and still achieve a reduction in server load.  This feature has been requested many times but the logic at the time preferred to keep everyone in a single, online only shard.

 

36 minutes ago, Warlander said:

They could...

And I could speculate on a few dozen other scenarios in quite some depth but following cause and effect (with a modicum of corporate IT experience) to the most probable outcome would just bring me right back to:

 

2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

I only see two somewhat realistic paths for NQ to make money w/ DU.  First would be a bottom up redesign to put 'game' back into the project.  Second would be going pay-to-win F2P.

 

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7 hours ago, Wyndle said:

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought they were trying to reduce server costs, not double them.  Even if we're talking about VMs auto-negotiating between the two realms it would only add to server cost to even attempt, much less maintain that state.  If anything, I would think an offline creative mode instead of tandem realms would fill your stated goal and still achieve a reduction in server load.  This feature has been requested many times but the logic at the time preferred to keep everyone in a single, online only shard.

 

And I could speculate on a few dozen other scenarios in quite some depth but following cause and effect (with a modicum of corporate IT experience) to the most probable outcome would just bring me right back to:

 

 

 

Perhaps but it comes with more players playing the game. Some just want a casual experience or PvE allows parents to play with their kids or just builders who dont care about PvP offers more subs for that experience. P2W would pay for itself and then some if there was an option to buy materials, quanta, or straight up ships that have inherant better stats, and of course the same servers we have now. Its why most games offer a PvE and PvP based server to cash in on both crowds. P2W is one of the most lucrative of models. There is a reason Star Citizen has billions to develop their game since they sell a ton of ships and they arent afraid to make money.

 

And why not allow players to host their own servers of micro solar systems with a 1-5 Tier package for paying for their own server connected via star gates or jump gates and Tier package based on how many planets or ore setup? NQ wasnts to be in the metaverse club so why not host servers that players can pay for to make up the costs of running one?

Edited by Warlander
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