There are quite a few backers of Star Citizen, who have multiple pledge packages (the packages that include the game itself), and have been asking for awhile how CIG was going to reconcile all of them (especially as most of them come with in game currency, soundtracks, and other goodies). Â Last night, CIG provided the answer.
What this means is that if you currently have four Star Citizen packages you will be able to play four different characters using one RSI account, each with their own ship and starting credit balance. You will also have the option of breaking up your pledge packages and reallocating these three elements as you deem fit. In addition, you will get to choose which characters receive your addon ships, Voyager Direct items and stretch goal rewards you have accumulated. In this example, someone with four packages could assign all of the ships and credits to one character and leave the three Game Characters for later use. Unused Game Character slots without an associated ship or credits have two roles. They can be used to create additional crewmen or they can be gifted to other players.
It’s a different solution than I expected, however, when you consider that there are no classes, so the ‘typical’ driver for needing alts isn’t present. Â They also look at the packages that contain access to the game, as being identical to someone buying the game at launch:
- Your Ship. Needed to travel the galaxy and play the game. Whether you’re exploring the stars yourself in a single-seat Aurora or captain of a Constellation crew raiding the space lanes, your character is going to need a spaceship to make a name for themselves in Star Citizen.
- Some Credits. Every package has an allotment of starter UECcredits. They will be needed to do things like begin outfitting your ship, pay initial landing fees, buy fuel and munitions, purchase your first load of cargo. We don’t break these out onto your UECledger just yet as we may adjust the starting amounts for each package when we balance the persistent universe costs.
- Game Character. This is “you.†Whether you choose to play a law-abiding merchant, a fearsome pirate or an intrepid explorer, you need a customized character who will inhabit your hangar and fly your ship.
It’s a good solution, if you’ve got a pirate pack and say a Freelancer pack. Â You can either play two different characters (have that dashing rogue to plunder some hapless merchant with!), or, turn that second character into your co-pilot/gunner on your ‘Lancer’s crew..and ensure you have the same dashing uniform! Â You can even designate that AI controlled co-pilot, as your heir, in the event of perms-death. Â Thus ensuring you’ve got a smooth transition of your mountain of UEC.
Don’t have an extra package that contains a copy of the game? No problem, CIG will make character slots available for purchase as a separate item. Â Which, makes sense too, if you look at some F2P MMOs like Star Trek Online, SWTOR, and Neverwinter. Â In these games, you’re given an initial allotment of character slots, and if you wish to purchase more to have alts to play, you buy some from the cash store. Â This will give CIG something else besides game sales, and credit sales to use to fund the game post launch as well, so it’s a win/win situation. Â No indication of what price point CIG will set, but I’d assume it’ll be a reasonable price (I’d hope between $5 and $10).
Of course, the fact that CIG stated they’ll sell additional character slots, raised some complaints on the forums about it being a ‘cash grab’. Â Chris Roberts either anticipated the complaint, or happened to be up late last night reading the forums, because he posted a response to the ‘cash grab’ allegation here.
Here’s a couple paragraphs of his response, that I think highlight the bulk of why this is a good solution, and not a cash grab.
The solution we proposed was to address the issue of people have multiple game packages but wanting to combine all the assets under one character but not lose the value of their “game keys” (which in our in-fiction setup become Character Slots). This allows people to get a benefit from a game package they were feeling they were losing, either by gifting to a friend to join them as crew (or buy just a ship and join the game), play multiple characters from the same account (as opposed to having to open up separate accounts) or by turning the slot into a customizable character for their crew (think the tight knit crew of the Serenity)
Once Star Citizen is live creating ongoing content, new functionality and running online servers costs money. As Star Citizen isn’t a subscription MMO our only sources of revenue to support these ongoing costs are initial game packages, Squadron 42 sized single player stories (think Wing Commander mission packs) and the people willing to trade some money for UEC as they don’t have the time or patience to earn in game. There’s a lot of people out there that think I’m crazy for taking this route (as most online games have a lot of cash only game items to generate money via micro-transactions) but I’m betting that Star Citizen with its low overhead will do well enough to allow us to continue to manage and expand the universe, even if we don’t bring in the money the way World of Tanks, World of Warcraft or League of Legends do.
Mr. Roberts also provided a brief insight into why SC’s ‘default’ will be one character per copy of the game:
I’m not a big fan of normal MMOs so the multiplayer side of Star Citizen is my answer to the kind of multiplayer game I want to experience. And because of this you should set aside a lot of preconceived notions of how SC will play. As I said before there is not meant to be any character classes in Star Citizen. I see the game as role playing an alter ego in a futuristic universe and I want you to make real choices in what you do. I’m actually not a fan of someone playing multiple characters at once as I feel that allows someone to make easy choices – oh, I can be as bad as I want with no consequence today, and then tomorrow be Joe law abiding. I want you to live and feel your character, almost like a second life and feel loss when him or her finally fights one battle too many (which was the whole point of the Death of the Spaceman mechanic). If you want to veer away from the straight and narrow you should do so considering the risks, and likewise if you want to “go straight” you should have to work to achieve it. That is real role playing for me.
To an extent, I agree with him. Â When I played WoW, it felt almost mandatory to have at least one alt. Â Whether it was for crafting, farming, getting dungeons to pop in a reasonable time, whatever.. Â so, I totally get where Mr. Roberts is coming from on this side. Â I also think it shows he understands that a lot of people have become accustomed to having alts for whatever reason, and so he’s giving them that option too. Â It’s not a perfect solution, but it should make most people happy. Â I think it will end up being a lot more flexible than people are assuming it will be.
It will definitely be interesting to see how the system fleshes out over the coming months, and what price point the character slots hit the store at.