Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

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ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey mod bro could you do something about the antisemitic imagery on this page, the posters that did it, and maybe something about the doxxing while youre at it? Thanks lots dude, keep up the good fight.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 02:26

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# ¿ Jul 19, 2025 13:30

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

"Specified post was not found in the live forums."

"Specified post was not found in the live forums."

"Specified post was not found in the live forums."

Great work Poirot, now can you do something about the antisemitism? Punishing the doxxing would be mucho appreciated, too.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 03:07

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Wile e coyote: who is he trying to fool? Doesnt he know its obvious its a drawing of a tunnel? Look. *runs straight into wall and cartoonishly accordions into a flat circle* see?

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 03:09

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

I just wish the epic chillaxed mod bruh who issued a mod challenge like the gbs bitch he is would do something about actual rules breaking rather than being tricked into hunting snipes

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 03:17

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey guys you all still doxxing people and epically cataloguing every single thing a group of people have posted on reddit + twitter day in and day out? What about the antisemitic drawings, still making em?
Do you guys maybe think thats not normal?

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 23:39

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Just a reminder and plea for you guys to stop doxxing people, sending death threats and archiving every single thing some people have ever said about the bad videogame and using this encyclopedic knowledge to point out that the number they said was gonna be is now a different nunber, and loling at it for hundreds of pages. Its mentally ill.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 23:42

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Raskolnikov posted:

Pedo. I hope you blow your brains out this Christmas.

Ah, the Chill Spaceship Thread.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 00:41

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

BTW unsubstantiated pedo accusations have a history of severe punishment on this site, so I hope you guys can see into that.
Guess I'll have to add it to the list:
Dont doxx.
Dont send death threats.
Dont spend every day of your lives trawling through posts about the videogame you hate.
Dont follow people online and keep track of all their activities because they like the wrong videogames.
Dont accuse people of a major crime like pedophilia without substantial evidence.
Dont tell people to kill themselves.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 00:49

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Pimblor posted:

Wow poo poo Inri and barftrent both back after epic megatrolleing. I am really glad you guys are back after sucking off jew baby dicks. Thank you, thank you god for making sure that these two can show us the way of god.

Pimblor posted:

No I'm pretty sure however you like to put your fyadisms (aka 1488 stormfront) this is just racism.

Pimblor posted:

At this point, I am sure that inri is not really the manifestation of the christian god, but perhaps, and just work with me here, a dirty muslin.

Pimblor posted:

Hey, but whatever. This is comedy and it sure is fun! Isn't it BarfTrent and NAZIHITLER INRI

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Pimblor posted:

omg i have been trollededed oh god please i am sorry please sa wash my sins away

Pimblor posted:

hi you're a piece of poo poo (unironically) thanks and god bless namaste

Pimblor posted:

please quote me in your forums so you win

Pimblor posted:

hi thanks for your continued anti-semitic posting, please continue your fetish, allahu ackbar amirite guise

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 05:18

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 05:22

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Chalks posted:

No. I have a twitter account and my feed is always blank. I have no way to explain how other people encounter tweets. Also what do all these buttons do I am confused.

So what youre telling me is that you have a twitter and you use it for the express purpose of following a bunch people you literally hate and read all their tweets because they make/like the bad videogame?
In what way is this any better?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 17:47

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Chalks posted:

No, like I said, it's blank. Like, totally blank.

Look, I know how this poo poo works, I've been looking at this entirely blank screen for literally days and it's blank as hell.

I'm basically an expert on twitter at this point and I know for a fact that it doesn't constantly pop up with random poo poo from people you aren't following just because they think you "might be interested in" due to someone you follow also following an account that liked a tweet. No sir, not even once. This is a thing I have never seen.

You seem to be treating me like some sort of moron who has no idea how twitter works. That's a lie. Twitter doesn't have any "suggested" tweets or anything like that. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely false. And don't even get me started on retweets! That's not even a word let alone a thing that would cause something to appear on your feed!! Hahahahaha, what nonsense.

I mean what sort of dumbass would accuse people of using twitter in the "wrong way" when they've clearly got no idea how it works in the first place?

Certainly not I.

So what youre trying to say in the most gbs way possible is that you have searched out such a volume of tweets about the people and videogame you hate that you trained the algorithm behind twitter to suggest you more?
This is even worse

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 18:02

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Things that have literally happened in this thread:
Doxxing someone.
Baseless accusations of pedophilia.
Suggestion of comitting suicide.
Antisemitic imagery and jokes.

And everyones "lol i doxxed her by creepily reading every google result that comes from googling her name xD" trying to act above it all.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 05:45

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey guys you should all stop being super angry all the time and doxxing the people who anger you. First of all I dont understand why you are getting livid at a videogame thats not even out yet, their developers, or the people pointing out how unhealthy that is. Please stop reading 9001 pages long reddit posts of the game you hate, watching million hour long videos of people you talked about wanting to murder, following them on twitter, or internet stalking me + calling me a pedophile.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 12:27

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey guys sorry to interrupt the hilarious process of getting angry at patch notes, but please stop doxxing, stop sending death threats, stop following people online all day, stop making antisemitic jokes, stop reading million word long reddit posts by people you hate, stop posting erotic spaceship imagery of spaceships, stop suggesting people to commit suicide.
I cant believe I have to even remind you that while not all of those are illegal, they do make you look like you're mentally unbalanced and creepy. Please, it's for your own good.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 16:15

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Congratulations epic star bad game stalk thread for making over a thousand posts on christmas. This finally proves to me you're all really normal chill and not obsessive hosed up weirdos at all.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 14:42

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

hanales posted:

You're bad at math and posting.

That might be true, yes, but at least I'm not the guy who posted over a thousand times about reddit and bad space game instead of enjoying the company of family and hanging out with friends.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 18:34

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

ArfJason posted:

Congratulations epic star bad game stalk thread for making over a thousand posts on christmas. This finally proves to me you're all really normal chill and not obsessive hosed up weirdos at all.

Bears re congratulating.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 18:36

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

having fun on new year's i see, literally posting over a thousand times about the game you all loving loathe all the way up till 12 o clock.
That's insanely loving obsessive but at least you guys haven't done anything sublimely loving stupid and criminal like doxxi

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 20:05

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

peter gabriel posted:

It's really nice that you bookmarked this thread and checked in on New Years Day

salr auto bookmarks threads you post in, and i didnt make over a thousand posts on new year's, nor did i doxx anyone.

so yeah...

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 20:17

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

TheLightPurges posted:

I figured that but seriously

Who cares

They have an (excellent) series of threads documenting everything embarassing goons do and over the years fuckloads of threads about specific people and their doings on the internet.

Arfjason in particular has made some hilarious gifs using a GBS mods okcupid profile to own him.

I think a lot of people dont get why FYAd come in here. They think posting this much about a videogame thousands of times is dumb as gently caress (it is) and want to obstruct that as much as possible by whatever means possible. And it gets a reaction out of a lot of the dumber posters here.

Thanks for not being a whiny bitch baby about it like the others, I genuinely appreciate that.

On some closing thoughts, I hadn't read the post until now, and it is sorta telling that when the guy made it, instead of telling him he is the exact charicature I made up, this thread went "HAHAHA gently caress HIM" "oh my god I hate him" and "lmfao, cant wait for the CARE BRIGADE". Call it concern trolling if you want, but that is actually distressing.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 21:04

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hav posted:

Is the trash 'google'?

You've gone weird man, just don't eat the soap.

Lmao.
loving imbecile.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2017 16:21

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Its amazing, really. The second I leave for holidays and stop posting that doxxing people is bad and wrong you guys become high impact faggots and do it anyway.
And instead of acknowledging how hosed up it is, ppl go "OOHH?? IS GOOGLE TRASH?? its all publicly available so its absolutely not creepy!!"
Whats wrong with you people?

# ¿ Jan 2, 2017 16:30

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Chalks posted:

Perhaps if the response to this sort of poo poo was more along the lines of "don't do that" rather than "well in the last month he made $72.50 from twitch advertising revenue and regularly appears on webcam to upwards of 100 people therefore I believe he qualifies as a public figure and furthermore..." they wouldn't be here.

Wait holy poo poo what

# ¿ Jan 2, 2017 16:34

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Goobs posted:

yeah, i had to enter the matrix and then type his name that's freely available into google, it was really hard work.

im sure you didn't mind mae demming tho amirite? what about ben's website? i wish you guys would be consistent with your whining and bitching.

kids these days with their socks and their pocket phones.

Let me see if I understood. The only reason it's not creepy and hosed up to choose to search out personal information on someone and repost it for others, is because it's easy?

# ¿ Jan 2, 2017 19:02

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Chalks posted:

Perhaps if the response to this sort of poo poo was more along the lines of "don't do that" rather than "well in the last month he made $72.50 from twitch advertising revenue and regularly appears on webcam to upwards of 100 people therefore I believe he qualifies as a public figure and furthermore..." they wouldn't be here.

hanales posted:

He has 20 twitch emotes, which means he has to maintain an average of 1000 subscribers a month. That's 5K a month that is split with twitch 50/50. So without ad revenue/donations/other revenue streams (you can see he is peppered with links to other sites on his twitch feed) he's making an actual living from streaming.

Lmfao it was true

# ¿ Jan 2, 2017 19:07

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Everyone, please stop doing incredibly hosed up poo poo like doxxing, sending death threats, obsessing over the bad space videogame, constantly stalking some twitter guy and now, posting pedo fiction because lol bitcoins. What the gently caress is wrong with you?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 18:08

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Have you guys really taken at best a lateral step from obsessively stalking internet people for the wrong game opinions to post pedophile fiction? Not that im surprised, this the subforum that had a mod who doxxed someone, and after countless denying that noone doxxes here, some guy went ahead and did it again.
What im trying to say is, stop doing all those mentally ill things.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 22:38

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Its insane but the admin of this website made an announcement saying that doxxing is bad. Hmm, I wonder where I've heard that?

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 23:29

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Yo, im glad you all still watch every second of hours long streams of people you hate, but i want to remind you thats incredibly loving weird.
I also want to remind the thread where people doxxed twice that you all need to stop doing that, along with harrassing people and obessing over 50k word reddit posts.
Please stop.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 02:37

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

I request that none of you examine hours long streams frame by frame with a thoroughness that'd make the team that solved the london nail bomber case look like ineffective amateurs, especially because people have the wrong opinion about videogames. It's not a normal thing.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 05:37

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

I think trawling through pages and pages of ten million word posts about star citizen to laugh at them is real weird, and that also following people through their twitters to make fun of their families and interior decorations is kind of hosed up. I guess it's not doxxing anymore but it's still weird as all hell.

Either way, please, don't constantly harass and follow people online because they had the wrong opinion of videogames. Don't doxx anyone, and don't send them any hateful messages.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 19:26

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey guys, constantly taking screenshots of the people you dislike and watching every single second of hours long livestreams of the game you hate to be able to land the perfect burn about some guys dinner is immensely hosed up. I mean its no surprise it happened in the friday night doxx e-stalking station (and all of this over a videogame), but come on.
Please, stop stalking people online 24/7, doxxing people, sending them death threats, masturbating to spaceships, loling about graphs all friday night. Please, for youre sake. I want the best for you all.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 20:40

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

boviscopophobic posted:

This post was supposed to go in the Theoretical Cetology thread, but it's closed for "archiving", whatever that means. You can check there for the previous forum snapshot/demographic estimate that I refer to below.

JAN 2017 RSI DEMOGRAPHICS UPDATE

About 6 months and $25M have elapsed since the previous demographic snapshot of the RSI forum population. Updated funding-related statistics are summarized below. The methodology is mostly the same as in my previous post, so you can refer to that for details as well as an explanation of the meaning of each graph.

First off, the forum account vs RSI account rate discrepancy has stabilized at about 3.5, meaning that 3.5 RSI accounts are currently being created for every forum account. This ratio obviously spikes during free fly events.

For the funding-related graphs, the basic funding assumptions remain the same as last time, but there are three updates to the methodology. The first relates to closed accounts. Thanks to the wave of refunds post-Streetroller, I learned that is possible to determine with reasonable confidence if an RSI account has been closed, which generally indicates revocation due to refunds or possibly other misbehavior such as hacking. This latest set of summary graphs includes only accounts that were "alive" at the time of the snapshot. The previous set of graphs included a certain number of "dead" accounts, which affected the accuracy of the title counts.

The second change is that I've aggregated all titles not associated with a funding level into an "OTHER" title, except for a small set of user titles that I deemed to be CIG-related. These titles, namely "Staff", "Developer", "Creator", "QA", and "Game Master", are assigned the aggregate title of "CIG". Some other user titles that are arguably CIG-related, but which I did NOT include in the CIG set, are "Bug Moderator" and "Moderator". Note that some developer accounts may mark themselves as such as such only by their account name; these would not be included in the CIG count.

Finally, to counteract title churn from people changing their title, I look at each account's titles over a number of forum snapshots and use the one that implies the highest funding level. Since user titles can be "understated" but not "overstated", so to speak, this should be a reasonable procedure if user funding levels are non-decreasing. Thankfully, since CIG almost never grants partial refunds, an assumption of non-decreasing funding levels should not introduce too much additional error. (Note: if no funding-related titles are available, then CIG-related titles are prioritized over "OTHER" titles.)

The contribution of concierge-level backers (High Admiral and up) has slightly increased -- 56.4% under the mid funding scenario, versus 53.6% last time. If we compare the graph of estimated average user spending by quarter of enlistment with the previous version, we get the following average per-user increases:

This indicates that accounts of all "ages" are continuing to put money into Star Citizen, possibly more so for pre-2014 accounts. However, note that an increase of $10-15 or so is a small fraction of the likely average transaction amount -- recall that this period includes Gamescom, Citizencon, the anniversary livestream, and the holiday sale, which featured pricy concept ships, cash-only sales, capital ship sales, etc. Depending on what you think the average transaction amount is (which I have not attempted to estimate), you could translate this into an estimate of the size of the current paying backer population.

Another longitudinal view of the backer population can be obtained by constructing contingency tables at various time snapshots. For example, the following is a comparison of highest user titles achieved through early August 2016, versus early January 2017. Because of how highest titles are computed, this table contains some unknown fraction of users "leveling up" through spending, and some users simply adjusting previously understated titles upward. I believe that the dominant contribution is leveling up, especially when looking at movement between the higher tiers, but I have not attempted to quantify this.

Note that we have two new pseudo-titles: "DEAD", indicating that the account died off (refunds etc.) between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017, and "UNBORN", indicating that the account was made between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017. So for instance, we can see that of 92 completionists as of Aug 2016, 1 of those accounts got a refund. Of 193 wing commanders as of Aug 2016, 31 were promoted to completionist and 2 got a refund, etc. Notably, 22 CIG accounts "got a refund", which most likely means they left the company.

As a rough measure of the propensity of backer subpopulations to level up, we can construct a matrix of outflow percentages. In this table, the number in a particular row/column indicates the percentage of the population with that row's title that advanced to get the corresponding column's title. So for instance, 16.06% of all Wing Commanders in August became Completionists by January. Similarly, 0.37% of Civilians became Freelancers/Colonels, etc. The hottest cells consist of concierge backers (High Admiral and up) moving up one or two levels, and CIG accounts moving to the exits.

If we are interested in inferring refunds specifically, then we need to look at pairs of snapshots that are closer together in time. Otherwise we can miss salient developments -- for instance, if a Civilian in August became a Wing Commander in November then got a refund in December, it would only show up as a Civilian refund in the above table. Using a set of several snapshots I derived the following counts for account deaths per highest title. I also noticed a large number of newly established Civilian accounts showing up as dead. To exclude possible low-effort banhammered trolls from the refund counts, I only counted Civilian accounts if they were confirmed as being alive for at least 45 days in at least one historical snapshot.

Completionist: 5

Wing Commander: 4

Space Marshal/Lieutenant Commander: 19

Grand Admiral: 27

High Admiral: 70

Vice Admiral: 47

Rear Admiral: 58

Freelancer/Colonel: 116

Bounty Hunter: 67

Mercenary: 61

Scout: 32

Civilian: 448

CIG: 26

OTHER: 74

Since this is a small and very much non-random sample, the likely accuracy of the funding scenario assumptions (already not that good) is probably far worse for refunded accounts. On the one hand, Civilians are assumed to have a low average contribution partly due to the proliferation of free accounts; however, a refunded account would obviously not be a free account. On the other, high-value accounts may not be refunded for anywhere near their nominal value, due to grey market transactions.

If we go ahead and apply the min/mid/max funding assumptions anyway, we get refund totals of $407,420, $674,587.50, and $941,755, respectively. For another estimate, also problematic, we can consider the self-reported refund amounts from /r/starcitizen_refunds. From reading through the posts that stated actual refund amounts, I arrived at an average per-user refund of $1366.10. Applying this to the 1028 non-CIG refundees, we would get a total of $1,404,350.80. These estimates are of course only for the refunded forum population. The multiplier to get the total amount of refunds in the entire RSI population would likely be well less than 2.5, which is the ratio of all RSI accounts to all forum accounts.

CONCLUSIONS

All previous caveats about the accuracy of these estimates still apply. In addition, there are particular problems with trying to estimate refund amounts. Nevertheless, I think we can conclude that the refund outflows, while CIG certainly would find them annoying, are probably small enough in total that they can be easily compensated for with an extra concept sale (if we don't account for increases in engineering debt).

There are indications that funding is leaning even more heavily on concierge-level backers; this might be a good topic for follow-up analyses. Account age does not appear to play a large role in incremental spending.

Previously I speculated about a soft per-user average spending ceiling around $200. This now seems to be more of an artifact of the bounded time window the backer populations have had to spend their money in. As that time window lengthens, fresh spending continues apace and it remains to be seen when there will be a large-scale change in backer purchasing behavior.

LMFAO

The Titanic posted:

That's also an underlying hilarious concept. That even if SC comes out exactly as pitched it'd be a hideously unfun game.

Like above, you just spent $60 for TBDDSE and you undock and you're blown up and crash on the nearby planet. Now you're stuck on this planet playing poo poo-tier Minecraft for the next 20 hours while managing food and water levels.

Or you finally get enough to buy a ship and it takes 3 real life weeks before enough materials are delivered to build your ship.

Or you get blown up in a glitch, and have to take a space liner back to your home base to get your ship, and that takes hours to do. Even better if along the way another player blows up your liner, and you get helplessly killed while cussing in frustration.

It's like the immersion animations. Sure it's cool two or three times, but after that if it takes longer than 1 second you're mashing the button to skip them.

None of the above sound fun, but that's what Star Citizen is trying to be. In a world where people get pissed if loading a save game takes too long, or getting back into the action takes too many button clicks and screens, or if the last auto save checkpoint was too far back.

Even the dream of Star Citizen is kinda crappy. People overlook it because everybody thinks they'll be Han Solo and never be dumb enough to be killed. They think they're going to play the heroic savior or kind benefactor or impossible to stop pirate, while avoiding these huge pitfalls. There is cognitive dissonance between looking at what CIG is implying and saying "and what will this be like to actually play?" and since nobody seems to stop dreaming about the impossible long enough, thinking the AIs will be anything more than walking on a track and doing canned animations every few steps, everybody seems to overlook that the game just sounds not fun to play. It sounds punishing. Which might be good for a Pay2Win game though. Suffer on a planet for 10 hours or pay $5 for a miraculous rescue taxi!

I hope that before everything crashes and burns, Chris Roberts gets a real vertical slice working. And people play it, and tell him it's not a fun game. I just hope that the twinkle of "I am saving pc games" can be stifled in Chris' over paid eyes before he gets shut down. I don't want him to go out with a "Well we tried real hard but..." kind of thing. I want him to know that his dream was poo poo, and even people who were excited for it tells him it's boring.

That closure may never happen, but it'd be good if it did.

LOL

Now this is the kind of poo poo we like to free up some hours of the weekends to read in the star citizen megathread.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 04:52

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Good Dumplings posted:

realtalk arf why is gbs basically tvtropes but with more wacky pictures

how did this happen and how can we stop it

My take is cause they're aids that run jokes into the ground cant let go of bad ones and rarely put any effort, and try to be shocking with poo poo thats deader than bowie.

Ermm i mean, doxxing is bad please do not do it.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 05:29

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Just a reminder, it's absolutely not normal to spend all day every single day for months on end following people on twitter and reddit, compiling all their personal information to make injokes and callbacks. It is also morally hosed up to doxx or send death threats to people, especially if their heinous crime was liking a videogame. Thank you.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 21:39

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Why all the Golden Corral hate? Golden Corral is honestly better than a loving movie.

I have a friend named Bruce. Bruce looks to be some kind of honest-to-God pirate at first
glance, and I mean Captain Jack Sparrow's crew pirate, and the ornery, mean old loving pirate
you'd never, ever want to mess with because he'd bite your God-damned nose off and eat it. He's
also wildly into K-pop, choreographs his own dance routines to it, and in the last year or two
has started just basically eating like a Korean, which apparently means shitloads of vegetables
and cabbage. Anyway, Bruce goes to Golden Corral like 2x a week, which I thought was kind of strange
due to his new health kick, so finally I asked him about it.

"Dude," he said. "Golden Corral has a shitload of vegetables, and their cabbage is great. But
you're missing the point. You don't go to Golden Corral just for the food. It's loving dinner theater."

And you know what? He's right. For $12 you can sit and watch some of the most hilarious, downright
hellishly gluttonous behavior you will see outside the Plane of Fat in the Demonic Abyss. I went with
him one time and laughed so hard at some of the poo poo on display that now I go with him about once a
month, get a big plate of steak and another big plate of salad, stake out a spot where you can see
most of the buffets (and oh for loving sure the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL) and just observe the kind of
unbelievably self-indulgent (and self-destructive) poo poo that would make a European or Southeast Asian's
person head explode off their shoulders in horror and make someone with a "sick sad world" sense of
humor laugh their rear end off.

Someone, say, like me.

For example, the very first time I went with Bruce I was witness to "the recon." This is a real thing,
and what I am about to describe is not an isolated incident, no sirree. Humongously fat people will
literally go scout the buffet. Now, I think we all do this to some extent at a buffet, in the "Hmm,
what do they have to eat here?" glance-while-walking-to-the-table sense, but this is done with military
precision, people. I've watched with my own eyes three people, all of whom were 300 lbs+, meet briefly
and talk, then split up and go to the buffets, carefully eyeballing each selection, lips moving, fingers
pointing, as if cataloging the unearthly delights that await them, then loving meeting back up in the
same place to discuss what they saw and plan an attack. I'm serious. They were like 10 feet away.

"Guys it looks like the fried chicken tonight is coming out pretty fast, pretty sure that stuff's going
to be good, but the rotisserie is just kind of hanging out. Pulled pork was kind of crusty but I think
if we dug down a bit there's good stuff there. There was a bit of a crust on the edge of the brown gravy
and someone dropped some loving broccoli in it but the white gravy's looking fine. Outside of that, hot
bar A looks good. And of course the bourbon chicken looks good as always."

"Fantastic. Well, the guy cooking the steaks told me they are busting open a new box in about 20 minutes,
so we should probably lay off that until then. I noticed there was a lot of bacon in the green beans right
now so that should probably be one of our first stops. The mac and cheese tonight also looks loving
delicious, it's got a nice crust unlike that bullshit last week when it was practically yellow water, so we
need to move on that. It looks like they recently changed out the taco stuff, especially the nacho cheese,
it looks brand new, so, take that for what it's worth."

"Well I've got bad news guys, from what I could see it looks like tonight's a no chocolate cake night,
they only have that loving one that has those fake cherries on top, and we all know how that fucks things up."

>groans all around<

"But it's not that big a deal because they just put out rice krispies with chocolate coating and the girl
said they've got tons of them. They've also got those sugar cookies and some fudge brownies that look all
right, and all the other pie poo poo they usually have."

"OK, so green beans, fried chicken, the mac and cheese, the white gravy, those are tonight's superstars.
Let's go."

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. I expected a loving Wonder Twin powers-esque ring bump at this point, but instead
they just all fled to a plate dispenser and began loading the gently caress out of their plates. It really reminds
me of nothing so much as when people like, discuss what's going on with their favorite sports teams.
Except with food.

This is also when I first experienced the phenomenon of the "multiplate."

Now, your average person will take a plate to the buffet, fill it with food, and go back to their table and
eat. But, you see, that person understands that when they are done eating, if they want more, there will be
more food available at that time. But the multiplater wants to hedge its bets. What if, between that first
and second trip to the buffet, the restaurant suddenly ran completely the gently caress out of food? Like, not even
mints by the cash register or gum in the quarter machines? WHAT THEN? Your deliciousness per second
(DPS... sorry) will go down!

It doesn't bear thinking about. Now it's unlikely, gentlemen, but not impossible, so as we are smart
consumers, we're going to guard against the possibility. So let's each go get three complete plates of food
and come back to the table.

Now I'm not talking a meal plate and a salad plate, as I mentioned before I myself do that every time I
go to watch this... whatever the gently caress it is, Theater of the Grotesque, I guess. But just imagine for a
moment going up to the buffet and getting a plate loaded down with actual loving rib-sticking food. 3-4
chicken wings and legs, a big-rear end helping of mac and cheese, some mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans,
two corns on the cob, and a yeast roll or two, then taking it back to your table. Time to eat, right?
WRONG. DIPSHIT. WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT OF FOOD WHILE YOU ARE EATING YOU GOD-DAMNED NINNY? WHAT ABOUT YOUR DPS?

So you just set this completely full plate down and go get another one, and again you just completely fill
the gently caress out of it with food. A couple of steaks, a pile of pulled pork, a rice mountain topped with sugary
chicken (MOUNT BOURBON), and a couple of smoked sausages with nacho cheese on them, then you take that
back to your table.

You now have enough food at your table, JUST ON YOUR PLATES, to feed an entire platoon of ten year-olds who
have been playing all day. Time to sit down and pig the gently caress out. WRONG. DIPSHIT. WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT OF
FOOD NOW? YOU'VE ONLY GOT LITERALLY TEN OR FIFTEEN THOUSAND CALORIES ON YOUR PLATE, YOU'RE PRACTICALLY
GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH. IF YOU DON'T KEEP YOUR DPS UP WE'LL HAVE TO KICK YOU OUT OF THE GUILD DUDE.

So again you set your second completely full plate down and go back AGAIN. I dunno what the gently caress you get this
time, since you already have basically everything they serve, but on one multiplate I watched a dude walk(?)
to the salad bar and create the following salad:

1 giant ladle of blue cheese dressing directly onto the plate
Multiple giant scoops of shredded cheese on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of those weird ham cube-bits on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of bacon bits on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of boiled egg crumbles on top of this
An enormous pile of croutons
A giant scoop of mushrooms (I think this "made it healthy" because mushrooms are like a fish or something and
fish is negative calorie superfood?)
2 giant ladles of blue cheese dressing on top

Just think about that for a loving minute. OK, frankly, it sounds pretty delicious, but holy poo poo how horrid
does something like that have to be for you? Imagine trying to poo poo that out a few hours down the line. But
now you have your third plate, and so now you can at least quiet the yammering fear that you won't get to eat
everything in the entire God-damned place before it closes down for the night, and at last you can finally
start to eat.

Again, this is not fantasy. I've watched this multiple times. I've seen a woman so fat she had to use a walker
to move sit by herself at a 4-person table and completely cover the surface of it with plates of food before
she started eating, and she cleaned every last one of them. It has the same uneasy, somehow alien fascination
of seeing a car wreck, or a really hosed-up porn where the chick is wearing spider prosthetics and hissing all
the loving time. You're like, am I really supposed to be entertained by this? I kind of feel bad, and sort of
weird, but... I mean, just loving look at it. It's brutal, unchained nihilism unfettered from any concept of
moderation or shame or self-preservation and frankly it's kind of fascinating watching someone deliberately say
"gently caress any sort of a comfortable life, WHERE IS THE THOUSAND ISLAND CONTAINER?"

So what I'm trying to say is, Golden Corral really is cheap dinner theater, and believe it or not you can
actually eat there without consuming ten thousand+ calories if you just eat a steak strip or two and some salad
or potatoes or something.

Oh, and did I mention the Chocolate Wonderfall? Well, frankly, if you dare to use that loving thing I salute you,
because it wouldn't surprise me to find a live octopus in it. This is already too long for a dumb post about
obsessive fatties at Golden Corral, but if I get a chance later I might type up some of the poo poo I've seen
people do with that thing.

BTW as a disclaimer I'm a 220-lb dude (6'2" though so I don't look too monstrous) who has spent his whole life
losing and then gaining weight. I know it's extremely tough to do, and it's REALLY tough to keep doing and maintain
it, but there's a big difference between "I'm overweight, try my best, run 4 times a week, and occasionally
overindulge in an entire tub of scoop n' eat cheesecake filling" and sticking your face to the loving ears into
the Chocolate Wonderfall and sucking like Cygnus X-1 till security gets there with the the bullropes.

I hope someone liked reading that as much as I liked writing it.

* * * * * * * *

OK, so, as promised, the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL.

That's right, a non-stop flowing river of chocolate decadence.

I have no idea how it's legal to have this thing. At first glance it's like, "Yeah, that's kind of cool, looks tasty,"
but then on further reflection you begin to think of terms like "vector" and "transmission" and "patient zero" and
start to reconsider. They don't let restaurants serve food "family style" (big bowls and serving spoons in a common
dish on the table) and this seems like family style on steroids. I dunno.

Bruce told me about the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL one night on the way to GC. "Dude, they have like this chocolate river
thing now, you'll see."

"Is it good?"

"No, dude. No. Just watch."

Now, they have a person who stands in the dessert section who is supposed to, I guess, guard the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL?
But they are not always there, and occasionally disappear into the back of the restaurant to do whatever it is that
is done back there. This is as effective as any guard who is randomly gone. But in case user 'goldencorral' is in
this thread, I will say that every gross/unsanitary thing I've seen regarding the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL has taken
place when this person, who I will call Deputy Sweeto, was gone.

The way people are actually supposed to engage with the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL: take a piece of something that would
be good with chocolate, stick it on a skewer, stick it under the chocolate, you are done. Put it on a plate so it
doesn't drop all over the place, go back to your seat, eat, enjoy, go home. Fifty return trips to the CHOCOLATE
WONDERFALL optional, but necessary.

So here are some things I've seen people do with the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL. Note that the real threat to the
integrity of the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL is not adults, who although they may do disgusting and unhealthy things to it
(such as using, say, actual loving fudge as the material to be chocolate-covered) most of them are conscientious
enough to not be unsanitary.

Oh, but unattended children, they Do. Not. Give. A. gently caress. And believe me, at GC there's going to be some unattended
children, because mommy and daddy are trying to get their DPS up people, and paying attention to their precious
living things might result in someone else getting more of the mac and cheese crust covering by delaying their
second multiplate.

Chocolate chicken leg: This is what I saw the first time I went there and just before the only time I contemplated
chocolating something up. Just as I was about to get up, I watched a little kid, probably about 6-7 years old,
walk up to the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL and stick a fried chicken leg in it.

Now, frankly, this is loving hilarious. Just really think for a minute about seeing this, the little dude just
staggering over to the chocolate and plunging a fried chicken leg into it. There's no question at this point that
little bits of fried batter are getting knocked off by the power of the WONDERFALL and merging with the chocolate,
and I know there's nothing I'd like better on a strawberry than some soggy, chocolate-infused fried chicken coating.
So already Bruce and I are laughing so loving hard we're practically injuring ourselves, but this gets better.
After thoroughly chocolating this chicken leg, the kid yanks it out from under the WONDERFALL, makes no attempt
to put a plate under it or anything, and turns and walks away from the thing, trailing the chicken leg at his side
like a caveman's club.

Well, it is dripping chocolate. Not a lot, but some, and no one is paying attention to it, so people are walking
through this liquid chocolate and just smearing it all over the place and making a hellish, God-awful mess.
Admittedly, it's just around that dessert section, which is tile, but still. Little dude walks back to his table,
looks at the chicken leg with some consternation, and then just throws it under the table on the floor.

I've seen a dude take a plate of bourbon chicken (which, to the uninitiated, is basically chicken bits in a brown
fructose sauce... but okay, it's delicious too), walk over to the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL, and use a spoon to
completely cover his already-soaked-in-loving-sugary-solution chicken pieces in milk chocolate. Ol' Deputy Sweeto
was there for this one, but didn't say anything because, well, what the guy was doing wasn't unsanitary or harming
the fountain or anything, it was just, you know, gross beyond belief at the cellular level. As he walked away
Deputy Sweeto caught me staring. We locked eyes across the restaurant, shared a brief look of "What have we seen?
Others have not...", and then went about our normal business, strangers connected by a shared glimpse into the
Maw of Chicken Madness.

Dude took his chocolate bourbon chicken over to the buffet, put a little rice on the side, and went and ate the
whole loving thing. Frankly I was tempted to go get a chunk or two of bourbon chicken and do the same thing myself
just to see what the gently caress that could possibly taste like and why someone would eat a plate of it, but then I
realized that I will at some point want to look at myself in the mirror and feel proud of my life as a human being
and so I didn't.

CHOCOLATE WONDERSPRAY: Occasionally you will get someone who is not satisfied with a single layer of chocolate on
their treat, and they will stand for a moment and let the chocolate on their tastybit harden a smidge and put some
more chocolate on it. OK so by occasionally I mean "almost everyone does this." I don't consider this horrid
gluttony unless you're up there for loving five minutes and walk away with a chocolate baseball on a stick
(but yes, I've seen people stand up there and do that for literally five minutes before, I think they are mainly
just trying to drip as much chocolate as possible onto the plate they hold beneath it, "Whoops, now I guess I
have to eat all this too, mustn't waste!"). But this little girl takes the cake for that poo poo. If standing there
and maybe gently blowing on your chocolate-covered tastybit allows more chocolate, then you know what would be better?

Blow on it like you're Superman putting out the loving Towering Inferno, that's what!

The little girl dunks her krispie, pulls it out, and proceeds to blow on it like Superman put- you get it. Well,
this results in little chocolate drops being blown all over the loving place. The sheer violence of the blowing is
also denuding her little treat of chocolate, so she sticks it in again and does the same thing, with the same results.
So again. And again. At this point the area near her is beginning to resemble something that has seen the touch of
several shotgun shells full of chocolate birdshot. At last her mother saw what she was doing and came and got her, and
then, in an unusual and heartening twist, called for Deputy Sweeto and tried to help clean up. Your average mom at GC
would have grabbed her child, looked around anxiously, and then slunk away. So high five, moral and responsible mom!

What the gently caress are you doing OH NAW DUDE DUDE NAW CHRIST: Short and sweet and horrible. Man gets soup bowl. Man walks to
CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL, fills soup bowl 3/4 full. Puts rice krispie on top. Walks back to table, crushes rice krispie
with spoon, begins eating pure liquid chocolate with minor crunchy bits, and I lose faith in the future of the world.

* * * * * * * *

So. Babies at Golden Corral.

First, let's just state that I love babies. They are nature's little Jokers, agents of chaos who just do not give a gently caress.
About anything. They don't give a gently caress about your rules, your controls, your social mores, or your laws. They will poo poo
on the floor like it's nothing. They are gonna do what they want, and when they find something they like to do they are
going to do it, and they will do it as long as possible and the longer they do it the faster they will do it and the harder
they will laugh. Seriously, they are about the best free entertainment in the world.

Literally the funniest thing in the world to me is to be in a crowded public place and have a baby start doing that kind of
crying where they are just screaming at the top of their loving lungs with tears running down their faces, occasionally
pausing and falling almost completely silent to gulp in another big lungful of air before going back to 180 decibels while
the parent looks around frantically and begs them to stop. I mean, seriously, that's the funniest poo poo in the world. Bonus
points if this happens at Golden Corral and Trailer Park Romeo & Juliet (see below) look at the shrieking, obviously
infuriated child, shrug like, "Zis my porblem? Sheeeit izza baby, he's justa cryn," before going back to DPSing as hard as
possible. Holy poo poo I'm seriously LMAO right now just thinking about it.

Now, I am a childless man. There is a really good reason for this, which is that I am a selfish rear end in a top hat who can't comprehend
not being able to wake up and just do whatever I want all day without being burdened by another living thing's requirements.
poo poo, I can barely take care of my snapping turtle, who only requires some sort of flesh be tossed in his tank every week or so.

But that said, even I understand at the atomic level that when you actually do have a child, that child must take precedence
over absolutely everything else in your entire life including anything you may have wanted. You have to nurture it, guide it,
protect it, take care of it, watch over it, and teach it how to be a good person who will contribute to society.

Unless you take it to Golden Corral. At this point, a magical alchemy occurs and you no longer have any responsibility for
your baby, and you should just let it run free and learn on its own things like "steam tables are hot" and "a handful of
ranch dressing feels funny."

You see a lot of kids at Golden Corral, sticking chicken legs in CHOCOLATE WONDERFALLS and things, and you do see a lot of
babies also. Now when I say baby, I basically mean a being anywhere from womb-age to young enough it can barely walk
unassisted and does that terrifying hard-lean-forward baby stagger while you cringe and simultaneously fear/long for the
inevitable faceplant. Young enough to still have to stick in a highchair, basically.

Quite a few couples with kids you will see at Golden Corral fit the stereotype I think of as "Trailer Park Romeo and
Juliet." This means:

1 partner very large, usually extremely disheveled, with a wild eye and an aggressive demeanor who speaks very loudly
and has no problem yelling threats of physical violence to either partner or child, like "IMMA FUCKIN BEAT YOU" at full
volume in the midst of a crowded restaurant. If this partner is the female they will always, always have at least one large
facial mole with multiple black bristles sticking from it.

1 partner whisper thin, hellishly passive, instinctively flinching, watery-eyed, with a sick smile and a completely
whipped and beaten-down aura coming off them in discernible waves. If this partner is the male they will always, always be
sporting a disgusting pubestache with three very prominent hairs longer than the surrounding pubes which have obviously
been cultivated with love and pride.

People say stereotypes are the language of hate, but they become stereotypes by being repeatedly true over centuries.

So anyway, these are the kind of people who will trail 3-4 kids from ages 1-6 into a Wal-mart and turn to the 6 year-old
and say things like, "NOW LITTLE BECKY YOU WATCH YER SISTERS OK" and then walk off to the bathroom and leave them alone,
or think nothing of knocking a kid to the floor when the least bit irritated.

To put it more plainly, abominable genetic misfit monsters who should never have been allowed to breed and shouldn't be
entrusted with the welfare of a human child. Oh, but they have them, and by the bucketload, and then they take them...
to Golden Corral.

Oh and before I say anything else YES, I know what I am about to describe sucks rear end for the server. I'm well aware of this.
I tip extremely well when I go to any place like this because I know the poor people working there aren't making dick and
are specifically having to deal with poo poo like this, so rage against that machine somewhere else.

If I had a baby, and I took the baby to Golden Corral, I know exactly the steps I would take. Here they are, in order:

Put infant in high chair.
Go get food when infant is safe.
Bring infant back some small piece of appropriate food they can gnaw on, if they are old enough to do so.
Occasionally feed infant small safe bits of food off my own plate.

Parents, is this reasonable? I hope so. Here is what I would not do:

Get infant a plate completely full of nacho cheese sauce and top with some chips.
Place on highchair tray in front of infant.
Ignore infant as it goes buck loving "samurai wild" on the incredibly inappropriate thing before it.

So, you know how when a baby does something it thinks is amusing, like, say, lightly slaps a stuffed animal and you go,
"Ow!" and it laughs? What happens next? Well, the baby is amused, and it wants more amusement, so it will slap the stuffed
animal again. Harder. And faster. If it continues to be amused, it will continue to do this. Harder. And faster. Again.
And again. Until it's a little sped-up blur of slapping and hysterical giggling. It's practically a law of nature, you
could probably make an equation for it.

(Baby amusement) = (Force of strikes)(Speed of strikes)

Something like that. Note that term A only gets bigger if terms B and C constantly increase, and term A must increase
because FUN FOR THE FUN GOD! So, now, imagine putting a full plate of viscous canned cheddar sauce before a baby.
What the gently caress do you think is going to happen?

Well, you can guess. Baby stuck its hands in the cheese, sucked some cheese off its hands, and eventually came to the
realization that by sort of hitting the cheese, it could cause an amusing pattern/feeling/spatter. The baby looked at
his own cheese-laden hand, fascinated, and then he laughed.

That laugh was the key. The equation had begun. There was no stopping it now. Across the room, I nudged Bruce. "poo poo's
about to get real, bro." He looked up from his mountain of cabbage and roots and other leafy poo poo and saw where I was looking.

"Oh gently caress yes, they gave it nacho cheese, how God-damned dumb are they? They gave it a whole plate!" This said in the same
tones you'd use to say something like, "It is El Dorado, a whole city made of solid gold!" Man I love that guy, he's awesome.

Now that first baby cheese-slap was just an experiment. We've all seen it, and you all know exactly what I mean. "What is
this? What does it feel like? How does it respond to my power?" But once baby has figured out that A)cheese isn't fighting
back and B)hey that felt funny and C)things around me turn orange! there was no turning back.

"I am Golden Corral's reckoning. Here to end the borrowed time you've all been living on."

A second slap landed in the plate of nacho cheese. Significantly harder. Significantly more cheese went flying. Already at
this point Bruce and I are laughing our asses off, because just these two slaps by themselves have made a hellish mess,
baby is covered in cheese, cheese is everywhere, mom and dad are DPSing and so don't have time to pay attention to their
precious child, and you can just see where this is going already. See this in your mind, friends, the child's arm speeding
up, harder and faster each time, the child giggling, its arm turning into a little pinwheel of destruction.

>SLAP<
Cheese flies.
>SLAP<
Cheese flies.
>SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP<
loving CHEDDARCAUST

There's loving cheese everywhere. The kid looks like they took a nacho shower, there's cheese in his loving hair, and I'm
not talking an isolated drop of cheese, no sir, I'm talking "gently caress it shave the baby, there's no way we're getting this out"
cheese-in-hair. The area on the floor around baby's highchair looks like someone murdered a Taco Bell with a power drill.

Mom and dad don't give a gently caress. "CURRR-TIS!" mom says, affectionate and exasperated. "Why'd you do that?"

Uh, maybe it's because you gave something without the current capacity for rational thought the equivalent of a food WMD,
lady, just guessing. So after seeing the ELE-level mess her kid had made, Momma Fats just moves the cratered nacho plate away
(which she ended up eating, a common enough fat person justification, "Oh honey do YOU want a giant plate of food you can't
possibly eat OH I GUESS I WILL HAVE TO FINISH THAT FOR YOU CAN'T WASTE") and handed the kid a loving chicken nugget.

This mess was so awesome that the server for that section literally called over multiple other servers to see it.

- Jonathon Spectre

LMFAO

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 00:12

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

boviscopophobic posted:

This post was supposed to go in the Theoretical Cetology thread, but it's closed for "archiving", whatever that means. You can check there for the previous forum snapshot/demographic estimate that I refer to below.

JAN 2017 RSI DEMOGRAPHICS UPDATE

About 6 months and $25M have elapsed since the previous demographic snapshot of the RSI forum population. Updated funding-related statistics are summarized below. The methodology is mostly the same as in my previous post, so you can refer to that for details as well as an explanation of the meaning of each graph.

First off, the forum account vs RSI account rate discrepancy has stabilized at about 3.5, meaning that 3.5 RSI accounts are currently being created for every forum account. This ratio obviously spikes during free fly events.

For the funding-related graphs, the basic funding assumptions remain the same as last time, but there are three updates to the methodology. The first relates to closed accounts. Thanks to the wave of refunds post-Streetroller, I learned that is possible to determine with reasonable confidence if an RSI account has been closed, which generally indicates revocation due to refunds or possibly other misbehavior such as hacking. This latest set of summary graphs includes only accounts that were "alive" at the time of the snapshot. The previous set of graphs included a certain number of "dead" accounts, which affected the accuracy of the title counts.

The second change is that I've aggregated all titles not associated with a funding level into an "OTHER" title, except for a small set of user titles that I deemed to be CIG-related. These titles, namely "Staff", "Developer", "Creator", "QA", and "Game Master", are assigned the aggregate title of "CIG". Some other user titles that are arguably CIG-related, but which I did NOT include in the CIG set, are "Bug Moderator" and "Moderator". Note that some developer accounts may mark themselves as such as such only by their account name; these would not be included in the CIG count.

Finally, to counteract title churn from people changing their title, I look at each account's titles over a number of forum snapshots and use the one that implies the highest funding level. Since user titles can be "understated" but not "overstated", so to speak, this should be a reasonable procedure if user funding levels are non-decreasing. Thankfully, since CIG almost never grants partial refunds, an assumption of non-decreasing funding levels should not introduce too much additional error. (Note: if no funding-related titles are available, then CIG-related titles are prioritized over "OTHER" titles.)

The contribution of concierge-level backers (High Admiral and up) has slightly increased -- 56.4% under the mid funding scenario, versus 53.6% last time. If we compare the graph of estimated average user spending by quarter of enlistment with the previous version, we get the following average per-user increases:

This indicates that accounts of all "ages" are continuing to put money into Star Citizen, possibly more so for pre-2014 accounts. However, note that an increase of $10-15 or so is a small fraction of the likely average transaction amount -- recall that this period includes Gamescom, Citizencon, the anniversary livestream, and the holiday sale, which featured pricy concept ships, cash-only sales, capital ship sales, etc. Depending on what you think the average transaction amount is (which I have not attempted to estimate), you could translate this into an estimate of the size of the current paying backer population.

Another longitudinal view of the backer population can be obtained by constructing contingency tables at various time snapshots. For example, the following is a comparison of highest user titles achieved through early August 2016, versus early January 2017. Because of how highest titles are computed, this table contains some unknown fraction of users "leveling up" through spending, and some users simply adjusting previously understated titles upward. I believe that the dominant contribution is leveling up, especially when looking at movement between the higher tiers, but I have not attempted to quantify this.

Note that we have two new pseudo-titles: "DEAD", indicating that the account died off (refunds etc.) between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017, and "UNBORN", indicating that the account was made between Aug 2016 and Jan 2017. So for instance, we can see that of 92 completionists as of Aug 2016, 1 of those accounts got a refund. Of 193 wing commanders as of Aug 2016, 31 were promoted to completionist and 2 got a refund, etc. Notably, 22 CIG accounts "got a refund", which most likely means they left the company.

As a rough measure of the propensity of backer subpopulations to level up, we can construct a matrix of outflow percentages. In this table, the number in a particular row/column indicates the percentage of the population with that row's title that advanced to get the corresponding column's title. So for instance, 16.06% of all Wing Commanders in August became Completionists by January. Similarly, 0.37% of Civilians became Freelancers/Colonels, etc. The hottest cells consist of concierge backers (High Admiral and up) moving up one or two levels, and CIG accounts moving to the exits.

If we are interested in inferring refunds specifically, then we need to look at pairs of snapshots that are closer together in time. Otherwise we can miss salient developments -- for instance, if a Civilian in August became a Wing Commander in November then got a refund in December, it would only show up as a Civilian refund in the above table. Using a set of several snapshots I derived the following counts for account deaths per highest title. I also noticed a large number of newly established Civilian accounts showing up as dead. To exclude possible low-effort banhammered trolls from the refund counts, I only counted Civilian accounts if they were confirmed as being alive for at least 45 days in at least one historical snapshot.

Completionist: 5

Wing Commander: 4

Space Marshal/Lieutenant Commander: 19

Grand Admiral: 27

High Admiral: 70

Vice Admiral: 47

Rear Admiral: 58

Freelancer/Colonel: 116

Bounty Hunter: 67

Mercenary: 61

Scout: 32

Civilian: 448

CIG: 26

OTHER: 74

Since this is a small and very much non-random sample, the likely accuracy of the funding scenario assumptions (already not that good) is probably far worse for refunded accounts. On the one hand, Civilians are assumed to have a low average contribution partly due to the proliferation of free accounts; however, a refunded account would obviously not be a free account. On the other, high-value accounts may not be refunded for anywhere near their nominal value, due to grey market transactions.

If we go ahead and apply the min/mid/max funding assumptions anyway, we get refund totals of $407,420, $674,587.50, and $941,755, respectively. For another estimate, also problematic, we can consider the self-reported refund amounts from /r/starcitizen_refunds. From reading through the posts that stated actual refund amounts, I arrived at an average per-user refund of $1366.10. Applying this to the 1028 non-CIG refundees, we would get a total of $1,404,350.80. These estimates are of course only for the refunded forum population. The multiplier to get the total amount of refunds in the entire RSI population would likely be well less than 2.5, which is the ratio of all RSI accounts to all forum accounts.

CONCLUSIONS

All previous caveats about the accuracy of these estimates still apply. In addition, there are particular problems with trying to estimate refund amounts. Nevertheless, I think we can conclude that the refund outflows, while CIG certainly would find them annoying, are probably small enough in total that they can be easily compensated for with an extra concept sale (if we don't account for increases in engineering debt).

There are indications that funding is leaning even more heavily on concierge-level backers; this might be a good topic for follow-up analyses. Account age does not appear to play a large role in incremental spending.

Previously I speculated about a soft per-user average spending ceiling around $200. This now seems to be more of an artifact of the bounded time window the backer populations have had to spend their money in. As that time window lengthens, fresh spending continues apace and it remains to be seen when there will be a large-scale change in backer purchasing behavior.

Seriously though LOL again at that second graph holy loly

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 00:20

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Yo guys you need to stop carefully combing videos of people you desire to murder frame by frame just to find if the button up shirt is the wrong square pattern colors or whatever obsessive minute detail you love to analyze 1000000hrs of footage for. It is really unhealthy behaviour, and makes you look like weirdos (I'm starting to think it might be more than just looks).
Please, stop doxxing people, stop jerking off to the bad spaceships, stop constantly posting through the entirety of friday nights about how much you want to assassinate with high impact weapons the wife of the bad space dev. I beg you.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 23:36

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# ¿ Jul 19, 2025 13:30

ArfJason: Sep 5, 2011

Hey guys, you can stop sending me boxes with decapitated animals and grafitting "SHITIZEN HERE [swastika] DONALD TRUMP". I wanted you all to become normal, but you doubled down and doxxed me, all because im telling you youre hosed up for reading 4000 word fanfiction, reading so much star citizen reddit you remember usernames and their history, and watch every second of every star citizen video stream to go LMAO!! at whether the right codec was used or how you cant loving believe they are using the wrong kind of lapel mic.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 23:43

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

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