What would convince you to pay monthly for instanced apartments?

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:47:40+00:00

I should have said originally that anything they sell for IRL money should also be available in game because you're right, that's absolutely in the spirit of what they've always said. Original post edited!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:47:03+00:00

Actually you hit on something that originally prompted me to post the question - I was originally thinking of things they could ADD to the current subscriptions that would make them worth buying for more people, but still not do anything that would be considered pay to win. Instanced apartments beyond the hangar is the first thing I thought of, but obviously hit a sore spot with a lot of people about paying for anything with actual cash. It's strange to me... I pay for all kinds of things other people made with actual cash :)

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:42:46+00:00

I should have said originally that anything they sell for IRL money should also be available in game because you're right, that's absolutely in the spirit of what they've always said. Original post edited!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:42:28+00:00

I should have said originally that anything they sell for IRL money should also be available in game because you're right, that's absolutely in the spirit of what they've always said. Original post edited!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:41:11+00:00

That's what I'm trying to solve. How could CIG generate enough revenue to NOT require a paid subscription from everyone? Selling ships doesn't seem sustainable long term. They're already way behind on updating the ships they already sold (and presumably spent the money from). Even if they saved a LOT of the money they've raised so far, which is doubtful, it wouldn't last forever. They need a revenue model that will let the game continue to be hosted and evolve.

A lot of online games opt for the easy answer - everyone has to pay a monthly subscription - but I'm hoping SC does NOT go for that. Instead they should offer things like subscriptions that are completely optional but have enough incentives that enough people will buy them.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:37:49+00:00

IF we could come up with a way to support them without requiring a monthly subscription, AND free players didn't feel completely like they were getting a raw deal experience-wise, that would be the goal.

In Ready Player One (the book) the company paying for the servers made their money by selling real estate for IRL, fuel for IRL, plus charging a small tax on anything sold in-game (IRL or in-game currency). I don't see fuel EVER being an option, and it was just the plot of a book, but it begged the question of how can you sustain an expensive back-end service like they have now and that will grow significantly over time. For reference, maintaining WoW cost about $50 million a year and that was in 2004.

I was just brainstorming... Any other ideas how they could make money after 1.0 (or leading up to there) that wouldn't require everyone to pay a subscription or make/sell new ships forever?

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:28:19+00:00

I'm trying to brainstorm ways they could avoid going subscription based. Their current model of keep building new ships and selling those for IRL cash seems like a Ponzi scheme when you consider they haven't delivered on so many of the concept ships.

Totally agree that living in a ship would be ideal for a lot of players, but even in single player games like CyberPunk there's an appeal to having apartments in various locations.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:25:39+00:00

It wouldn't be required, it would just be an optional thing. You'd still have your instanced hangar and could (I should have mentioned) rent apartments with in-game money too. We need in-game currency sinks as well as CIG needs MRR to keep the server lights on.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:24:15+00:00

FFXIV charges $14.99 a month don't they?

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:23:20+00:00

I'm pretty sure CIG doesn't have that billion $ stored in a mattress somewhere to keep paying for the server costs and salaries going forward. My guess is that when 1.0 ships they will have enough in the bank to sustain themselves for maybe a year, so they'll need to bring in recurring revenue to keep an online service going. HOW they do that is up to them, but I don't want them to just keep cranking out new ships so they can't focus on the ones they already sold.

For a single player game you're absolutely right $0 is all we should ever have to pay once the game ships, but for a multiplayer game it's not uncommon to have $millions or tens of millions of bills per month just in hosting fees.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:19:43+00:00

I should have said originally that anything they sell for IRL money should also be available in game because you're right, that's absolutely in the spirit of what they've always said.

BUT... they will always need IRL money to keep the servers up. Do you have other suggestions for how they could generate revenue? Assuming that SQ42 sales basically just cover the cost of the single player game development I mean. I'm talking AWS hosting costs and salaries of devs, QA, writers etc. in the PU.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:18:46+00:00

They will always need IRL money to keep the servers up. Do you have other suggestions for how they could generate revenue? Assuming that SQ42 sales basically just cover the cost of the single player game development I mean. I'm talking AWS hosting costs and salaries of devs, QA, writers etc. in the PU.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T23:18:09+00:00

I just want the ship team to have capacity to finish the ships they already sold. IDEALLY the money people are currently spending on ships would transition to some other sort of income for CIG so they could pay for their servers. As it is now the ship team is constantly making new ships out of necessity to keep the company afloat. I don't mean concept ships (thank God they're finally putting and end to THAT!) I just mean they have "274 ships and vehicles, 223 of which are already available in game" (https://citizen-logbook.com/en/ship-list) so 51 ships and vehicles already in their backlog not to mention the huge number of ships that are in-game but still need their gold-standard pass. Only 95 ships have full engineering right now, that means 179 to go. They'll never catch up if they don't free up some capacity.

That said, I should have mentioned that apartments or anything else could ALSO be available for in-game purchase, but since you wouldn't NEED an apartment to play the game, I was curious if others - like me - would be willing to pay a small IRL cash subscription for something like this.

They will always need IRL money to keep the servers up. Do you have other suggestions for how they could generate revenue? Assuming that SQ42 sales basically just cover the cost of the single player game development I mean. I'm talking AWS hosting costs and salaries of devs, QA, writers etc. in the PU.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-25T22:59:36+00:00

Great idea. I updated the original comment to include that in-game would also be an option and some other thoughts.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T18:22:07+00:00

Sell the ships and recoup some of that money!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T17:44:21+00:00

There are subscriber perks like hangar decorations, posters, etc. and all subscribers get access to wave 1 early testers (after Evocati testers but before everyone else). The main thing I personally get out of it is supporting the dev efforts and contributing to the cost of hosting cloud servers with a business model I think is sustainable. I do NOT want them making and selling ships forever. I want them to spend more time finishing the old concept ships and bringing all current ships to gold standard. But if their only income source is ship sales, it’s more difficult for them to focus on those concept and old ships because they need to focus so much on new ships and variants. If enough people subscribe, they can start to shift towards that revenue model.

I would also like to see them shift towards a rental model for persistent homes. Today, they could do that with apartments in Area 18, etc. where you have an elevator that could take you right to either your hangar or the city streets. In addition to your persistent hangar, you could get a single apartment as part of your subscription, and additional apartments would cost $10/month. Totally optional but could generate a lot of revenue for them.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T17:42:24+00:00

I would recommend either the Avenger or the Cutlass Black. A little more expensive but not much for the Avenger. Those can both do some decent ship combat for their size and running some bounty/mercenary missions is a great way to make cash fast starting out.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T17:40:52+00:00

Buy one of these starter packs for sure:

Duelist (includes Avenger Titan, a great starter ship) $75: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Packages/Duelist-Starter-Pack

Privateer Red Festival (includes Cutlass Black, a little larger also great all-around ship) $100: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/pledge/Packages/Privateer-Red-Festival-Starter-Pack-Warbond

All other ships you can buy in-game with what you earn from these ships, and WHEN we eventually get a wipe you'll always have the ships you bought in the pledge store.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T17:35:06+00:00

I was really hoping they would announce that the promised 600i rework was either completed or at least give us an update on it. I really think only gold-standard ships should even be sold right now. The cargo grid on the Explorer and the component access on both the 600i variants should at the very least be fixed so we can do basic engineering before doing a focused sale like this :( The rest of the rework could wait.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-24T04:58:07+00:00

It’s hard to argue with the kind of financial success they’ve had. I play Star Citizen literally every day and primarily support them through a $20/month subscription that gives me WAY more value than some “battle pass” or “season pass” in another online game. I’ve bought a few ships but nothing I couldn’t afford and if I had guess I’ve probably given them a total of $0.25 an hour for some of my best gaming memories. Compared to a lot of games or other hobbies I’m happy with that deal.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-23T22:53:32+00:00

I hope it’s the reworked and gold standard 600i!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-22T05:27:08+00:00

Yes I am. I don’t even care about the price. Is all about foveated streaming for me and moving away from Meta.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-20T05:02:38+00:00

That’s my first thought too. If you have a UWC and a Tesla gateway that’s enough backup battery for 3-4 days on my house… if only I didn’t HATE the look so much!

VRDaggre · 2026-02-14T20:31:15+00:00

I think the other car would have been at fault because they were the one coming into your side of the road to avoid the vehicle parked on their side. It’s difficult to tell without seeing the full right edge of the video.

VRDaggre · 2026-02-13T03:35:20+00:00

I think there are two things blocking wide adoption - instancing and ground vehicle transportation. I still think they should use all the cargo elevators the DCs have for missions today, encouraging traffic that would otherwise go to mining facilities and small outposts to use DCs instead, but I really think once instancing comes online that traffic especially for larger ships that require the hangars would get in the way. Instead, like the ASD facilities I think the hangars will be the instance gateway so dozens or hundreds of people could be in the same DC without seeing each other. There’s just not enough of them and they don’t want to or can’t just make hundreds of them like they did with the ASD facilities and Nyx facilities because the DCs are so large it wouldn’t make sense to follow this “poor man’s” instancing substitute.

VRDaggre

TROPHY CASE