$9 * 12,000 people (a much more realistic number) = $108,000. Not hard to figure that one out.

I was not replying to you dystopic. Sorry for the confusion. I was replying to the fellow who seemed to think a profit could be made off of a $1 ship pack IF 100,000 people purchased it. My point was, you could improve on his gross if only 12% of his original number purchased at the suggested $9. But thank you for helping to make my point. At least two of us agree.

I'd buy a ship pack for $9

The 2 dollar thing for a tiny bit of content is currently really annoying me in Oblivion, so please don't do that. (or if you do, at least offer content that lasts longer than 15 minutes.)

A ship pack for under a tenner I would probably buy, IF you vary the models of the ships drastically from the game offers now. I like the ships, don't get me wrong, but it all looks the same. Yes, I know I can modify it myself, but the BASE models are very, very similar.

If you get at least five completely new ship lines in there (ie, from tiny hull to huge hull) that look very different from the five we already have, absolutely. Sign me up.

As for your forums, my biggest problem with them is that most of them are full of stickies so the first page only shows like five posts. I'd also like a main forum page with links to all the subforums. The board you use seems to be fine, I'm kinda partial to vBulletin Board, but meh. Whatever.
But your forums can definitely use more transparancy. Makes it easier to find threads you were following etc.

Creston

Keep that ship pack idea for the expansion. Selling bits of art for your game leads people to think you just want to get money from them. Plus, since the game, according to you, is so easily moddable, we will soon see very very good mods, that will perhaps be as good as your ship packs ; people will start to think that you consider them as milk cows, like every other game editor out there. (This is what is happening for Bethesda : most mods are better than the ones they are releasing... Heck, modders even patch the game, while the developers are occupied developing stupid horse armor to get one more dollar from their favorite milk cows). I was so upset when i saw Bethesda selling a horse armor for 2$... When i buy a game i buy a full product, and i shouldnt have to invest money in it after my initial purchase... What is next? Purchasable patches? AI packs for 5$? Really, i hate this ship pack idea... You should include it in the expansion, or distribitute it for free on SDC. Or dont do it. Gal Civ 2 sold very well, every customer trusted you ; dont ruin this trust.

I wasn't keen on the idea of the Horse Armour mod either when it was announced, however the two situations are slightly different:

Bethesda were already being criticised for several reasons before they announced the Horse Armour mod. They had been silent on the forum for a long time and had not bothered responding to fans' and players' concerns over aspects of their game. Now that the game is released, they are only releasing bug fixes for free, not extra features.

Stardock has a good reputation for dealing with its customers, and always explain the reasons they take various design decisions. As well as bug fixes, they are releasing extra features for the game for free. The dev explained in his post, that it will cost them a lot of money to develop the extra hull pieces.

The Horse Armour mod caused so much anger, because many customers already felt ignored (and perhaps even a bit cheated). They waited for a response from the devs, but all they got was an advertisement so they could spend more money, lol.

If Stardock choose to release extra packs that you can pay for, it won't damage my image of them at all, providing the content is optional, and not required to run the game. I'm wondering how this will affect the chances of a multiplayer expansion. What happens if one player has the extra hulls and another doesn't?

At the end of the day, its down to personal choice whether you buy it or not, and the success of that release will help to determine if the prices go up or down over time. I think cars are too expensive, which is why I don't have one - it doesn't mean I expect companies and the government to make them cheaper to run for me.

Nobody really needs to buy extra hulls to play the game, so its not harming players if its released. IMO, asking a company not to release optional content because you personally find it distasteful, is harming other gamers who would be willing to pay for it.

For crying out loud, it's $9 and you can use the extra hulls forever after you buy them! How much money do you people spend on beer every week? Once you've drunk it its gone, right? And, believe it or not, beer is NOT a neccesity.

When my sisters were little, the elder of the pair popped a balloon, which the other had brought home from a friend's birthday party. Her reasoning was: "If I can't have one, why should she have one?". I've no idea why I just remembered that...

As opposed to several people who are clamoring for some sort of in game ability or out of game discount..

A simple ship art pack that is high extensive (multiple ship hulls as proposed) Perhaps even new ship design paramaters so there is less overlap. Jewelry that has different connection points etc..

Bethesda's fault is that they made Horse Armor pack that is essential for protecting your horse, so for a real die-hard fan it's not truly optional.

If it's just graphics updates (which I would buy) then it would be more palletable, though perhaps sell less well.

seriously, if $9 is a problem, i suggest: check the cracks in your sofa; open a lemonade stand; see a penny, pick it up; babysitting. don't give up, you'll be there in no time!

You can buy it for me then rich man. For some It is a lot of $$ especially when you dropped $40 for a game that was advertised as having modding ability and a company reputation of great service and updating games a lot. Nowhere was it advertised that you yould have to pay extra for the full enjoyment of the game on top of the $40 and the price of an expansion pack,

Companies already release expansion packs that you have to pay for, this is nothing new. Here, we're talking about releasing something smaller, which costs less than an ordinary expansion pack. If you think about it, this is good for the consumer.

I can pick and choose which add ons I want, instead of buying the whole bundle. I bought the Civ 3 expansions and never used any of the multiplayer features. If they released a smaller pack containing only the new civs and units, then I would have been much happier (and better off financially).

Hmm, let's see here. Ten races in the original game, with five ship 'styles'. Generally about three different hulls per size. Since we're apparently talking about adding five more ship 'styles' (to fill out the rest of the races), and adding one more hull per size, we're going from fifteen to forty hulls per size, so an increase of 166% in hulls. No numbers on the increase in jewelry, but overall, it sounds like we're talking about roughly doubling the graphics assets of the game. That sounds like it'd be worth $9 to me.

However, I definitely am not a fan of paying for the same content twice. If the new graphics assets are also going to be in the (presumed) expansion, I'd like to see some assurance from Stardock that those of us buying the ship pack would receive some discount on the expansion... This is one of the big ugly points of what BethSoft is doing - I have the niggling suspicion that BethSoft will bundle their twenty or thirty (eventually) content downloads, together with some new stuff, and call it an expansion - leaving those who bought the content downloads holding the bag.

2) Stop calling people cheap. It is the least productive (and inaccurate) argument to make. A mini-expanision is not a pizza. Although some people might balk at 9$... most buyers don't really care about the difference between 5-10 bucks. What they do care about is value. If you tried to sell me a rock for 10$, I would be offended, because I perceive its value to be less than 10$. Same thing with your horse armor example. No one really has a problem with paying 2 bucks for horse armor. Its simply that they feel its value is not equivalent to 2$ (and it should have been in the full version).

I disagree. Most people are claiming $9 is too much because they can't afford it...not because of some perceived value association. Many people want something for nothing and that is what i am seeing here. Oh well, enough about people's willingness to pay for work done...I think it is a good idea.

Art for free or for less than its true value is PIRACY.

You know, THAT didn't made any sense at all.


Call to arms! Close the bunkers, open the armory, all battleships in formation, the Drengin, the dark Yor and the Snathi have allied with the free-art pirates. We're dooooomed.


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@ PieBrain

Well written. Have to agree with you.

You can replace "artist"/"art" with "software developer"/"software" in the above and it is probably even more true. And yet Stardock is able to provide free software patches and support. I'm not adamant against the ship pack (as I've already posted above), but I'm curious why you think art is so different and expensive that it couldn't be provided as a free bonus the way the software itself has been fixed and enhanced?

Apparently they must pay their art department more or some such, being a passionate and very good artist myself, i have to say what a great idea. The kind of art there referring to is probably very different to what i like to do however.

Besides people expect a certain number of under the hood trype patch fixes after initial title release, and thats planned for in a games budget beforehand to cope with (normally) any bugs that havnt been squashed by release. Add every now and then a bit of added content that didnt make it into the final build (X3's later patches) or just a bit of free content from the bottom of the hearts etc etc. But also because people arent very likely to spend money for an expansion pack or an add on which soley caters for more subtle under the hood changes, that most players could blink and miss. They need something they can see, get to grips with, interact with and manipulate, and generally get all misty eyed about.