CIG's pricing practices

[Booster Terrik]

Expiring 0 dollar CCU's is bullshit. I have a few of those CCU's as insurance against CIG screwing up the design of my ships.

The point is : I will not know IF I want to apply the CCU until CIG is almost done balancing and designing the ships. I have a Gemini, Connie (with phoenix upgrade unapplied) and a BMM. In case they screw up these ships I can CCU them to a Redeemer, Carrack, Reclaimer, Crucible, Hull D and Endeavour. None of those ships are flight ready either though so I cannot know which one is more suitable to my playstyle before they are actually fleshed out and balanced.

If they want to hurt the traders then just limit the CCU's to 1 per account per specific CCU and make them non-giftable. Expiring the 0 dollar CCUs is a bullshit move since it forces people to choose between ships that aren't even in design yet. Exchanging my ships for store credit is not an option for the BMM and the Gemini since I got them on the grey market so I would get less for them in store credit than I paid for them.

[Donut]

1 hour ago, Booster Terrik said:

since I got them on the grey market so I would get less for them in store credit than I paid for them.

I'm going to play devils advocate here and say that's the fault of people going behind CIG and buying their products. You intentionally went and bought something outside of CIG that was supposed to be rare and limited and now if you melt them they won't be as much. 

You should have known that was part of the risk of using the grey market. Gifting was never intended for people to set up a marketplace online and make a profit off CIG's assets, in the eyes of CIG.

[Devil Khan]

The expired date would be find IF the ships were flyable. However, some (the majority I suppose) of ships are sitting there for years and have $0 CCU. I think this isn't a new think as most of their new concepts are basically $5 difference Gladiator, Freelancer MIS(limited) , Sabre, Hurricane, Defender and Terrapin. However large ships for example $350 Endeaver, Reclaimer and Crucible and some haven't decided yet, but with the $0 expiry date means you can bet all will have expired before using it. Did any one consider that the $0 is not giftable, but the ship can by giftable.. maybe ships that have the $0 CCU loses the giftable.    

[Teefy]

4 hours ago, Booster Terrik said:

since I got them on the grey market so I would get less for them in store credit than I paid for them.

so there's the problem right here.

surely you dont expect them to accomodate the grey market ? its not illegal, no. its not exactly encouraged either.

[GRIZZ]

1 hour ago, Devil Khan said:

maybe ships that have the $0 CCU loses the giftable.    

You get my vote here, it solves the grey market, but unfortunately does nothing for CIG's balancing argument.

• $5 CCU minimum, I can deal, I just add $10 more to my "ship CCU spreadsheet".  
• No more Concept $0 CCU's, no effect on me.  
• CCU's expiring, uh-oh.  This means I need to be DAMN SURE my biggest ship is exactly what I want before it or its $0 alternatives are in game.   The big question is when do my $0 CCU's expire?

The CCU dance is just a meta-game to me.  Gives me interesting ways to upgrade ships while waiting for the actual game to release.  We all knew it would end, I just expected it to end closer to Beta. 

While it will be refreshing to finally apply my CCU's and sit back, I was hoping to do it slowly.  Applying the a CCU and exploring the ship for a week then apply the next CCU and so on.  

Spoiler

Anyone want to sword fight with a couple of Cat's?

 

[Painmiester]

Well 

This is why we can't have nice things..?

I hope this will curtail  and hamper the  big sellers..

*CLAPS*

[ChiefWarrant]

So for conversation sake NOT argument..... the grey market came to be because CIG hyped/glorified LTI and they limit the sale of ships to fit their marketing needs. (In their words, "balance").

It's a game in the making/development so when people pay $xxx for a digital gift (pledge/support/whatever), the customer expects delivery on a promised/conceptual believe. 

What I am getting at is CCU (as a courtesy) and melting, exist because we change our minds due to changes in the game. .....So cause and effect.....

I am not the developer just a backer. If CIG changes how it does business, it's on them. I can either choose to "donate," or stop or ask for a refund. I just hope all this back and forth ridiculousnes with their marketing gets managed a little better, to prevent the mob (some one million plus backers) from calling bullshit on them consistently. 

--- rant over ---

[Devil Khan]

They have already done that that is, that is, changes how they have done business.

I am trying not to get in this rant, but five dollar per each ship, I just (begrudgingly) accepted that, but the changes this week is worse in my view. I loved how grey market  really wouldn't be that unaffected except for $5 with the some changes. I too would have my small cost over the several ships Endeavor, Reclaimer and Crucible (and the Hull D) and the 250 Warden, Redeemer since the redeemer has to be reworked again and won't be flyable for ages (at least 2018).  The expiry date really puts are larger crowd.

don't confuse the Business side and the Dev side, are known for being separate sides. I wish that CIG would only start a concept sale when they are flyable or at least with the large sides the entire layout internal. 

[GeraldEvans]

And that $5 is still nothing compared to the implication of deciding now which features to build up based on which ships have sold. If they make salvage the shallow end of the entertainment pool, no one will want to do it. Same with exploration or mining.  The point is that this game allows you to pick your path and to have *cough* fidelity.  Not that mining is a minigame, exploration is a golf-swing, and combat and trading are realistic simulations.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/developing-star-citizen-based-on-ship-numbers-is-t

[Metternich70]

The actual problem is that pledgers shall be free to change ships with no restricition different from prices as long as CIG is free to change the features of ships as they like.

Look at the warden ... not cheap at all and nerfed to almost useless. Why shouldn't customers that have bought it in a package be allowed to swap it for a decent ship?

And warden is not the only example of a ship that - when launched (and then bought) - was shiny and powerful but later on was reduced to a crap .... when CIG launched another (shiny and powerful) concept in the same tier!

Someone said that this happened because of errors, not by purpose. Well ... Mr. Roberts can be a lot of things, but he does seem to me everithing but "naive" in money things.

[Juntau]

Okay, I am going to be super "me" right now. You kids need to stop thinking that you are entitled to these things, like CCU's. CIG nor the rest of the world owes you a damn thing. You all new the risk of DONATING to this project. They give you something to be nice and help you out a bit and all of the sudden it is an entitlement. If it were me I'd treat everyone like the little children they are behaving as and cancel the whole damn program...NO MORE CCU's...deal with it. But instead, because it's not the way YOU think it should be, you want to tear it down, shred it to pieces. It won't be perfect, it never will. Grow up, move on.

[Devil Khan]

actually, pledges is the name on our buying. so Yes WE ARE ENTITLED to said product.

I still won't matter if our +5 and yes I have a few +$0 to see which I will keep warden or redeemer. This is not really the same as melting you ship and buy the other ship. The problem is most of the ships aren't available at the same time. Yes, you can use it after doing that.

 

[KKillroyV2]

1 hour ago, Juntau said:

Okay, I am going to be super "me" right now. You kids need to stop thinking that you are entitled to these things, like CCU's. CIG nor the rest of the world owes you a damn thing. You all new the risk of DONATING to this project. They give you something to be nice and help you out a bit and all of the sudden it is an entitlement. If it were me I'd treat everyone like the little children they are behaving as and cancel the whole damn program...NO MORE CCU's...deal with it. But instead, because it's not the way YOU think it should be, you want to tear it down, shred it to pieces. It won't be perfect, it never will. Grow up, move on.

 

What a surprise, Juntau came in and rather than adding to the conversation called everyone an entitled kid, It's almost like listening to him on air

Anyway, I'm fine if they do whatever they want to limit the large grey market sellers, but when CIG throw a fit over players selling their ships to other players at cost or just limit normal players' ability to change ships in response to CIG not even knowing what some ships roles will be when they are initially conceived I get salty

[Fizzlefuse]

I have to say that I do somewhat agree with @Juntau and think people confuse buying and donating.
You gave money freely and CIG gives you a ship in return to give you a bit of a boost in the game. Technically we're not entitled to anything as we didn't BUY, we DONATED. Honestly we don't own the spaceships. CIG does. We pledged and CIG allows us to use these things in the game. Everything they make for this game is their property.

It's the same as WoW characters which, even though you spend money on the monthly fee to play, level boosts, pets, mounts and realm transfers and whatnot, Blizzard still owns the character and can just delete it if they see fit.

If CIG decides to change "your" ship or CCU item or whatever in any way, they're fully in their right. They could even take all your ships from you. It would be VERY bad for the project and their reputation but they could. Technically.

They decided to make a system so that, if a ship comes on sale that you'd rather have then the one you already pledged for, you could switch without losing other items associated with the initial pledge.

Now, I do think they either were stupidly blind to miss how people would abuse the system or just made a really bad choice in turning a blind eye to the abuse for so long.
In CIG's eyes this thing turned into a clusterf*ck and they're trying to fix it.

This is possibly also because, and this is pure speculation, the tech to buy spaceships in the game is being worked on and with that the CCU system becomes a even bigger pain in the ass. I'm sure we won't see the ingame buying of ships at least untill beta if not the full release, but still I think they see it coming and they must prepare. But that's just a theory.

[Reavern]

A reasonable compromise would be to limit the number of $0 CCUs to one per ship on a backer's account. That would limit that number of $0 CCUs a backer could have, so they couldn't exploit the system, but would also ensure backers could change their ship without having to pay CIG $5.

For example, if the Hornet F7C was the only ship and game package on my account, and when cargo hauling and trading is introduced in Alpha 3.0 (or whenever), I decide to convert my Hornet to a Freelancer instead, I should be allowed to have a Hornet-F7C-to-Freelancer-Base $0 CCU on my account, which will never expire. (At least not until the "Upgrade Deadline", which is the point during the Beta when CIG has said backers will have to apply their ship upgrades.)

The problem seems to be that some backers have stockpiled $0 CCUs so they can swap ships on a whim. I understand that CIG wants to reduce the number of $0 CCUs in the system. I believe that reducing them to reasonable number is the fairest way to do it, rather than changing CCUs so that the cheapest will be $5, even if the ships are the same price. That just seems like a cash grab by CIG. It's bad enough that the CCU system only works for upgrading, not downgrading. That's always been a frustrating and pointless restriction. I don't understand from a technical perspective why CIG can't setup the CCU system so that if I wanted to convert my $110 Hornet F7C into a $90 Gladius, I could buy a "downgrade" for $0, and when I applied it I'd end up with a Gladius and a $20 store credit. It's not a refund, so it wouldn't cost CIG anything. I think CIG just decided not to include downgrades because they want backers to pay $$$ to upgrade their ships, not downgrade them for free.

That said, I don't think I have any $0 CCUs on my RSI account, so this doesn't really effect me. The ship upgrades that I do own but haven't applied yet all cost $$. For example, I bought all 3 Reliant upgrades because I wasn't certain which one I wanted for my Reliant Kore. (TBH the Reliant flies like a pig and if it's not fixed, I'll melt it.)

My concern is that CIG making CCUs cost $5 minimum, the next step will be CIG imposing a $5 fee for any ship upgrade. CIG already did something similar with the $5 Handle Change. WHY does it cost money to change your handle!? So it could happen. That's why I think backers need to stand up to CIG on this issue and there should be a compromise, which will also send CIG a message that backers aren't just going to rollover for them when CIG tries to milk more money from us.

[AstroJak]

I have a question, i'm not sure anyone including CIG has thought to ask yet regarding this latest and greatest CIG brain blunder... if they make all $0 CCU expire, will this also affect every CCU that started out as a $0 CCU, even though the price of the ship in question has now increased? Eg) The old Taurus to Khartu-Al CCU which started out as $0 but now that the later ships costs $170 the old CCU effectively gives you a $20 pump. 

If this is the case, it would suck beyond measure and make me a very unhappy panda!!!

 

Aj

[KKillroyV2]

3 minutes ago, AstroJak said:

I have a question, i'm not sure anyone including CIG has thought to ask yet regarding this latest and greatest CIG brain blunder... if they make all $0 CCU expire, will this also affect every CCU that started out as a $0 CCU, even though the price of the ship in question has now increased? Eg) The old Taurus to Khartu-Al CCU which started out as $0 but now that the later ships costs $170 the old CCU effectively gives you a $20 pump. 

If this is the case, it would suck beyond measure and make my a very unhappy panda!!!

 

Aj

 

I imagine that is exactly the reason they are doing it Astrojak

[faquarl25]

10 minutes ago, AstroJak said:

I have a question, i'm not sure anyone including CIG has thought to ask yet regarding this latest and greatest CIG brain blunder... if they make all $0 CCU expire, will this also affect every CCU that started out as a $0 CCU, even though the price of the ship in question has now increased? Eg) The old Taurus to Khartu-Al CCU which started out as $0 but now that the later ships costs $170 the old CCU effectively gives you a $20 pump. 

If this is the case, it would suck beyond measure and make my a very unhappy panda!!!

 

Aj

Yeah. I think they also realize that us backers who enjoy playing for the  **value** could seriously cut into their revenue stream. I don't know what they were expecting though with a community made up of a lot of Min/Maxers. I understand why they are doing it. But with ongoing balance issues, I don't think now is the time to do this. 

[Metternich70]

22 hours ago, Juntau said:

Okay, I am going to be super "me" right now. You kids need to stop thinking that you are entitled to these things, like CCU's. CIG nor the rest of the world owes you a damn thing. You all new the risk of DONATING to this project. They give you something to be nice and help you out a bit and all of the sudden it is an entitlement. If it were me I'd treat everyone like the little children they are behaving as and cancel the whole damn program...NO MORE CCU's...deal with it. But instead, because it's not the way YOU think it should be, you want to tear it down, shred it to pieces. It won't be perfect, it never will. Grow up, move on.

well ... this 47 y.o. kid (of course, since I'm aging, I took is as a compliment, you know ... I prefer keeping a "diplomatic" stance) is quite aware of Eu taxation law, and therefore knows that donations are not subject to VAT,  only digital sales are. This means that CIG - as far as considers all the payments for concept subject to VAT - admits that he is nolonger getting donations but selling digital goods that imply certain legal guarantees (and that BTW - in my opinion - this is the actual reason why they changed refund policies including an express disclaimer).

 

[Devil Khan]

It's not a donate, it is a pledge. There is a different. Donation means you get nothing, pledge means you do, but at the risk that the other side finish it. Listen to @Metternich70 he really old and knows what he is saying

[CyberianK]

Legally afaik although I am not a lawyer it might have been in gray zones initially but it was always regular sales if you had to pin it down. Meaning us buying a service or good. And tbh its not that different from the backers mindset it was always this way for the majority of backers. If it wasn't about buying ships but just about giving an amount of money of your choice to support the project none of SCs success would have happened.

 

Sure its selling a non existing shiny thing and paying mostly for dreams.

But its still kind of a sale and not that much different from buying a X000 dollar Apple product.

[Painmiester]

The aurora will be the bastard ship. ..the get me to point a and b ship.

[Sky Captain]

I  can see how those who felt they somehow had flexibility to "have the choice for all of the $350 ships" without the real investment required to really own them are now disappointed.  However, at the end of the day, folks in that boat were going to have to eventually choose anyway.  

Things could be much worse. CIG could be forcing us to choose ships with no CCU options at all.  The good news is that a CCU system that allows a ton of buyer flexibility, just for a low cost, is available.  We should be appreciative of that because we did not always have that. 

Besides, what other digital goods company has been allowing regular trade out of $350 items for zero cost?  A minor service fee to reflect the cost to maintain the systems required to track ongoing, million plus in number, billing transactions is not all that unreasonable for the flexibility offered.