intardnation posted:

MWO didnt die after the golden mechs? or Niko's crap? and Goons are playing it?

Golli posted:

While I am curious,

I'm thinking no.

"Save it for Space Court"
-- Abraham Lincoln, paraphrasing Sun Tzu, probably

intardnation posted:

Is everyone sure Ben is still there?

MilesK posted:

His wife was in the new RtV yesterday.

I would guess he's just currently unassigned now that he's too big a creep to mod the forums and looks too much like death to appear on camera.

CrazyLoon posted:

Is it even possible to be too big a creep to mod the Spectrum?

Golli posted:

While I am curious,

I'm thinking no.

"Save it for Space Court"
-- Abraham Lincoln, paraphrasing Sun Tzu, probably

Nebiros posted:

Is my Centurion 9AL still viable? I loved that poo poo up to ghost heat. I need a new heavy armor time sink and old dumpster fires are at least actual games.

intardnation posted:

MWO didnt die after the golden mechs? or Niko's crap? and Goons are playing it?

necroid posted:

lol are you serious, are you aware you're acting just like shitizens? do we have to preface our posts with disclaimers like they do?

anyway unlike dozens of people itt I have never given money to the thumbman

Streetroller posted:

Would you guys appreciate a more thought out video presenting my entire case. The who, what, where, when?...

I'll even shave.

Loxbourne posted:

So CIG started selling land plots and the backers let them...

Not immediately. They had a two-day window of shock and horror before the cult purged itself. We're now in the projection phase and citizens are merrily telling one another the previous unpleasantness was entirely due to goon infiltrators, who I also see are being blamed for CIG needing to sell land in the first place and the whole idea that MMOs that sell land might not have their backers' best interests at heart. My, those infiltrators have been busy. Good job, agents!

Some people are refunding, and probably more than will post about it, but while new money is down the number of refunds is still a tiny fraction of the backer base. Why is that, you might ask?

Well...selling land in Star Citizen isn't an impossible pill for the faithful to swallow. It uses the accepted form of cultist/CIG interactions ("we give them money, they give us a better place in the Dream"), it was delivered via the usual channels of a video broadcast and a specialist ship, and it's a thing other big and successful-looking MMOs have done. But a refund...a refund is unthinkable.

The existence of people who want a refund is a direct threat to the core of a Citizen's self-identity. A refunder looked at the same things a citizen sees, heard the same articles of faith a citizen heard (especially the one that said Star Citizen will wow everyone and fill them with awe and wonder)...and walked away. A Citizen can't even imagine that without asking themselves some very, very painful personal questions. The existence of refunders physically hurts. If forced at gunpoint to pick who to climb into a wankpod with, a good citizen would probably pick a goon ahead of a filthy refunder.

So who refunds? Who walks away from Omelas? Let's have a look at that. Let us, like the occasional confused citizen who posts in r/starcitizen_refunds to ask why people leave, take a look around at the common attributes of a successful refund story. Our very own saviour narrative, if you will.

They consistently describe a long period of unease. Their faith wavers months, if not years in advance. Star Citizen's biggest problem is the game itself; it's broken. All those crashes and distorted horror-models and ships that can't get off the launch pad, they mount up at the back of a cultist's mind. They're not completely incapable of critical thought.

For a long while this thread's biggest threat to Star Citizen was Peter_Gabriel's videos, which do nothing more than just play the game with silly annotations. They didn't just point out SC had problems, they did so in an easily understandable and entertaining manner. The backers hated him - the "he edits his config files to produce those bugs" conspiracy theory is still one of the funniest things to come out of the forums. This is what your game looks like. This is where all your money went. If the leakers are to be believed, CIG created the entire concept of the Evocati (with all the wails and backlash that caused) solely because Chris and the senior managers were so incensed by P_Gabz and his imitators.

Then there's the sheer expense. A good citizen Buys More Ships on a regular basis, at least every sale cycle. Most of them aren't whales; the financial impact of all those taxed paycheques, all those drained savings accounts...any citizen with a decent eye on their own life is going to glance at their bank balance sometimes and wince. The citizens used to regularly give advice to fellow backers on how to handle sceptical relatives and concerned wives. We recently had a guy ask how to get around his own bank, who'd flagged the transactions as a scam.

It builds up. It all builds up. You drop hundreds of dollars on a Cutlass to try that space pirate dream and it just doesn't work; you can't get the door to open, the ship can't take off, you can't get into or out of your seat. When you do, a guy in his underwear with flaring nipple jets rushes past you, clips through the turret glass, and steals it. A citizen can get a bit frustrated after a few weeks of that. Let alone a few years.

For the mentally strongest and most grounded of backers, the unease can be enough. People left over the Cutlass and Mustang reworks, because the sheer length of time and smug responses from CIG made it clear they didn't care once they had your money. People left over the flight model, over the terrible netcode and balance in Arena Commander. Some of the very first refunds were from people who saw the game's scope bloating and rebelled. Most however just get more and more uneasy and need a last push. They need a big shock, a kick in the teeth, an unforced error from CIG that whips off the illusion and makes them realise just what CIG think of them. They need a Gamescon 2017 moment.

The shocks are, almost universally, things that shake their faith in Chris. Not the game, not even CIG most of the time, but Chris Roberts himself. Lando can leak things, Tony Z can be undermined, Ben can be an alarming reminder of what CIG likes its whales to act like...but for pretty much the whole lifetime of the fanbase, backers' faith has been in Chris Roberts himself to deliver the game they dream of. You have to shake that before they head for the door.

Let us take an example close to home. The first big wave of refunders on the SA forums came after Chris's explosive letter to The Escapist. It made him look like a petty idiot. But it came well after the first rumblings that something wasn't right within CIG. The goons back then had misgivings, but they were largely aimed at fellow backers and community management (the brown sea and, of course, Ben Lesnick). The idea that CIG might be a hellhole internally was mostly considered funny. Then Chris shot himself in the foot spectacularly, and the heretics were off and running. The next waves? The Space Door ('nuff said), and Beer4thebeergod getting banned.

With faith intact the state of the game genuinely doesn't matter. A cultist has already internalised that the game is bad now but will be glorious later. It's the "glorious later" that needs to be threatened before he refunds. That's why "I_still_believe_in_CIG" puts his beliefs right in his username. Faith is genuinely all he needs.

GamesCon 2017 was such a perfect disaster because it had everything; obvious attempts to appeal to backers that backfired, the long-awaited Idris, Miles and mission systems and grabby-hands and they all blew up. They all blew up in front of a sweating, increasingly nervous Chris who clearly hadn't done the slightest testing or taken the slightest precaution. The illusion imploded. Ecce homo.

But just because you've had a shock, and you've had a crisis of faith, doesn't mean you're necessarily going to refund. Refunding is scary.

A citizen at this point is staring into a big, dark abyss. He is very vulnerable and likely quite anxious. If he refunds he gives up the dream; accepts that he isn't Captain Spaaaaace Hero but rather a 43-year-old payroll clerk from Idaho who may have spent a lot of money on something rather dumb. He loses friends he may have known for years by now (possibly his only friends), he loses his position of respect in the community, he may lose a significant amount of money in grey market trading or subscriptions. Yes, it had already left his bank account, but he could go and look at the JPGs and tell himself he owned them. Might just get to fly them someday. That'll never happen if he refunds.

Hasn't he seen the shamings, perhaps cast out some filthy apostates himself? That's going to be him now. He's seen the goons (all members of the refunds subreddit are filthy goons), heard the stories of their mockery and rage, and now he's giving up the protection of his community to go and be among them. What will they do to him? Will they mock him? He may already be struggling with shame over being fooled AND doubting the Crobbler, having the goons lay into him would be too much to bear. The friends he loses will hate him. One of the more tragically amusing sights is the occasional cultist who refunds and then tries to return to his old haunts, sure that the bonds of friendship are more powerful than a mere game and that Star Citizen was indeed the people he met along the way. Such people discover, hard, just how quickly the door slams shut. There's no room for nuance in the Star Citizen fandom. You moved yourself into the BAD category, so you are now a goon and a shill and a scammer and probably Derek Smart too.

That's what a refunder faces when mulling over their crisis of faith. Even before the final practical reality of typing out an email to their idols demanding their money back (The refunds subreddit is wise here to provide pre-written emails). Then he's gotta survive CIG's deliberately slow and guilt-trippy refund process that all but tells you the names of which developer's children will go hungry tonight because of your treachery.

And yes, the most effective emotion to get a citizen past all these hurdles is anger. Sheer balls-out fury at their treatment. Get mad, refunders! Get mad and stay mad! But to get that mad means accepting you've been had, and accepting your whole social life and community are based on a lie.

The Citizenry knows this. The Citizens as a community are actually quite good at rallying to someone whose faith is wavering and bolstering it. It's a cult survival trait, achieved with both flattery and threats. Ignore your fears, come back to the dreeeeeeeaaaams. Stay with us and you can be Han Solo and Captain Picard and everything the real world says you aren't. Relax and buy more ships and STAY WITH YOUR FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS YOU FILTH. This idea that a refunder is some kind of financial delinquent is a new one, not seen before about a year ago. I think it might be an attempt by hardcore cultists to process the reality of people heading for the exits in ways that don't contract their beliefs. He's not an apostate, he's just a cowardly quitter. One whose act can be expressed as both cowardice and desertion with a dash of "you'll never be a rich whale if you treat investments like that" resentment. Real soldiers stay by their moneysinks!

And the cult really are good at it. Half the day-to-day activity on the Star Citizen subreddit really boils down to mutual reassurance that yes this is a cool community and the game will be awesome. It's pretty much the community's entire raison d'etre right now, since they sure as heck can't play the game and "testing" it is a polite fiction.

I once commented that the one citizen I feel genuine hate for is the one who told Humility (a backer clearly suffering severe depression and expessing misgivings about his compulsive spending) to go buy a Phoenix and relax into the bubbles of his hot tub rather than think too hard about how much money he was throwing into Star Citizen.

There's no (working) hot tub. There are no bubbles. There's barely a Phoenix. Even if there were all of those things, they still wouldn't be real. But right then a vulnerable person was grasping for reasons not to think about the big scary facts they'd started to realise about their life, and the collective dream was juuuuust real enough to be preferable to reality. Buy More Ships until you feel better.

I appreciate the purpose of this thread is not to trigger the glorious refund cascade, much as we'd enjoy it if it happened. I appreciate that people are adults and responsible for their own actions. But I'd really like to introduce that guy to the sickening and heartbreaking truths of the Fourth Stimpire.

Streetroller posted:

Would you guys appreciate a more thought out video presenting my entire case. The who, what, where, when?...

I'll even shave.

Streetroller posted:

Would you guys appreciate a more thought out video presenting my entire case. The who, what, where, when?...

I'll even shave.

SomethingJones posted:

No, your video got the point across with passion and style.

gently caress all this 'you should have done it like this'

Streetroller posted:

Would you guys appreciate a more thought out video presenting my entire case. The who, what, where, when?...

I'll even shave.

Tortolia posted:

Once the case has been heard by the court one way or another and is over, a video outlining your case, your experience with these personal attacks and anything you learned would be really cool. Until then, focus your energy on more productive ventures.

necroid posted:

honestly, I haven't watched your video but this guy's comment doesn't really strike me as an attack, it reads more like a surprisingly reasonable critique.

XK posted:

I had criticisms of his video, but I do agree it's best to let it be.

SomethingJones posted:

It came across to me as one of the sincerest videos I've ever actually watched on youtube about anything. My instinct would be to not change a thing but that's just me. Oh, apart from turn the loving sound up

quote:

Colostomy Bag
Hobold
ewe2
Breetai
Scruffpuff
Galarox
Beer4TheBeerGod
Sabreseven
Nebiros
Mangoose
Spiderdrake
Malachite_Dragon
Jobbo_Fett
GyverMac
BeigeJacket
Toops
Trilobite
Raskolnikov
shrach
Sunswipe
Zzr
monkeytek
Daztek
Propagandist
D_Smart
SomethingJones
intardnation
DapperDon
MarcusSA
Deki
big nipples big life (via Ayn Marx)
MedicineHut

TheAgent posted:

hello

we got a lot of people entered so it's now time to close the not-so-secret santa streetroller giveaway

we had the following people submit true and heartfelt comments about Streetroller

I've picked the winners at random by blowin up the font to 26 and jabbing a finger at the screen. I'll be sending the bolded winners a PM

thanks everyone for participating!!

D_Smart posted:

I have a better hint. Watch the bold parts carefully. It's amazing really.

XK posted:

The sincerity was never in question.

Did you see how many jackets he was wearing?

TheAgent posted:

thanks everyone for participating!!

ManofManyAliases posted:

You're a loving idiot. And furthermore.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Is this the alpha giveaway?

Sunswipe posted:

Congrats to the winners, and also to TheAgent for doing something nice. You are a prince in a world of dragons, sir.

ManofManyAliases posted:

You're a loving idiot. And furthermore.

boviscopophobic posted:

I watched that "gameplay" and the main source of any interest was the guy worrying that he'd lose his ship and real-money weapons due to bugs. When he returns to Olisar he worries that he hasn't done a good enough parking job to keep his ship, so he makes multiple auto-land attempts which all try to kill him. At the end he reveals that he bought two M7A weapons for real money, lost them both to bugs, and has now bought a third.



$15.30 * 3 = $45.90

TheAgent posted:

moma how come you don't wanna play 3.0 with me. for reals. you're probably the only person in the thread that plays. beets given up (and I don't blame him, the low fps and stutters can be p nauseating)

ManofManyAliases posted: