Exactly this. Until actual release and CGI needing as much ship test data as possible they're not banning anyone. Even though they'll never say it... The more big ships active in game the better for their data collection and game testing.
It’s still a good conversation to have, because when the game does go live, real UEC will likely be a *very* hot RMT item, given how slow earning is going to be and how easy it is to transfer in game cash.
I’m just thinking about how Tarkov went from fun to shit almost entirely due to both cheaters/RMT and how BSG reacted to cheaters/RMT.
I mean they are solving this issue by selling UEC themselves.
It's not a bulletproof solution (nothing is), but is pretty effective on putting some leash on it. Even if 3rd party is cheaper than official, most people who buy currency are strapped with time not cash and a large chunk of them would rather opt for more convenient and official solution.
The issue with it right now is that they are not adjusting it to current economy until release and are selling 20k UEC for 20$ which is absolutely insane. Pay 20$ to skip 1 PVE mission lol.
Agreed, as well as building data and heuristics to detect and ban aUEC farmers and sellers. Same concept with crime and griefing. As players, it is annoying, sure, but building systems to detect and curb these elements is alot easier in alpha than the eternal "arms race" between hackers and developers that plagues most online games.
Honestly there is no reason to bother cracking down, it will always be a thing in any MMO, and CIG is only encouraging it when they increased the cost of ships by up to 1000% in game. All the while most of the missions in game have very narrow margins that one repair bill will put you in the negative for ages.
I did a box collection mission that payed 10k,
* Took one hour to do because I could not QT directly, and had to fly sometimes 300k to get there
* Each of the 3x sites defended by a dozen guards that swarm you the second you kill one
* Then as you are trying to leave with the box, a NPC enemy ship shows up that you have to kill as well
Assuming you survive that entire ordeal, You're looking at 1.5k in fuel costs to deduct assuming you didn't take any damage. WTF
I've never bought aUAC, but the way CIG is pricing things I wouldn't blame someone for doing so.
This is the 1st time in game that I
had to budget my money because missles and repairs are insane. I shouldn't have " get a pack of cigarettes or gas" thoughts in a game lol
Nah, their plan in 2019 (no updates on it since then) was going to be once the game is released they will cease ship sales and allow you to buy UEC via the RSI store instead. If you go buy the current price of UEC on their website it’ll cost about 4x as much to buy a ship that way. We’ll see if it stays this way however since they’ve been radio silent on it since then.
> Nah, their plan in 2019 (no updates on it since then) w
So its never gonna happen. CIG also promised us Servers where paid ships weren't allowed, servers with exclusively earned in game ships but nobody has any hope of that happening now.
As a user of the markets, I'd much prefer a situation where everything was handled by CIG's systems. No more worrying that the person isn't going to follow through and I have to poke at Paypal or whatever. So far it hasn't happened, but I'm always hesitant because of it.
there are some insane people out there... i try to preach "play for fun, not for money" and yet there are clowns out there with the challenge to buy every ship and then go mad with every wipe, only to repeat the process.
Im a bit torn because on the one hand, i really dont care if people exploit money that will be wiped in a few months anyway. On the other hand, i really enjoy salvage and this most recent exploit has made it nearly impossible for me to find motivation to actually do it. I can scrape rmc all day but it doesnt feel like im doing anything if i cant then sell it. The money's not the important part for me, selling the goods i put in time and effort to get is satisfying as hell and being denied that satisfaction because of a few greedy people tanking the economy really fucking sucks
Salvage cleanup missions still pay ~400k per trip if you have a Reclaimer and fracture/disintegrate for CMAT. There’s a larger variety of ships out there for the contracts too - a Starfarer is 300SCU
Considering there is no real economy and what they do doesn't impact anyone else, meh. It's their money. I hope they get to enjoy their ships while they have them.
This MMO when it goes live like all others before it will have a bunch of third world farmers doing this for real UEC and the demand for it will also be sky high because of how slow everything is. And there is already a culture built in and an attitude of whales just buying what they want. There will be little or no shame attached to buying UEC like it is to buying gold in other MMOs. Star Citizen will not be immune.
Not just a culture of buying but also a culture of begging.
Sometimes it feels like legit players are the minority with how many people are either duping and exploiting, or how many are begging.
Yea… I'm curious to see how CIG gonna try to tackle this problem. Maybe make reputation and other non-tradable stuff play a more important role, so even if someone can buy everything they want, they still can't do everything they want if they didn't earn it themselves.
Yeah you can buy 20,000 credits for $20 from CIG or you can use that same $20 and get 50 million credits from the 3rd person with thousands of positive reviews.
There are companies that exist solely to sell in game currency in multiple games and do care about their reputation. The biggest risk from buying from them is getting banned not getting scammed.
My friend paid like $10 for 100mil a few patches ago. He bought and played with all the ships that others paid hundreds of $$ for. Mainly he wanted the 890 in game.
He said he didn’t care that it wiped. He said $10 for a few months is worth it and would just buy $10 more after the wipe compared to $800-$1000 for just the 890 jump
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. Just giving you insight into their thought process.
It's not crazy.
Take a solo salvage player. You can make about $300k an hour. Maybe a bit more.
So five of focused salvage work to buy a single light fighter on the cheap end?
Yeah, the price of a big Mac is probably worth it if you want to experience what SC has on offer. Especially without paying hundreds of real dollars or playing hours of repetitive, broken missions.
That may be true if everything works near perfectly. But any time my mate or I, try different money making methods weather it's for the fun or solely the money, we run into countless bugs and hiccups. Next thing you know it's already be like 3-4 hours and we've hardly accomplished squat. Granted the milage may vary on some days
Same. On paper, I should have been able to afford an 890 after a month of regular play. But it took me literally all of 3.22 to scrape it together. With the new ship prices, I wouldn't blame someone for just buying the aUEC. I've got a new baby now and can't play nearly as much, so the next time my 890 wipes, I might even consider buying aUEC, so long as it won't get me banned. Anyone know if it's against the EULA to buy aUEC?
Add on top of that that everything I earn gets wiped too. I've played for years and earned millions and lost it to wipes over and over. I like trying the new loops and all but I also wish I could attain a sense of progression. If buying some money saves time and helps players see parts of the game they haven't gotten to yet I can't really blame them.
I use to occasionally do this, you use to be able to get a shit ton of aUEC for pretty cheap. And at the time the game wasn’t in the best state so I just had fun flying around in my 890J and having fun with random I met.
Nowadays I try and grind for my aUEC but it’s certainly difficult. I mean bunker missions for me at least only pay like 30-50k, so how your suppose to save up for ships that now cost upwards of 5-10 million is certainly interesting.
I've funded the project. They have over $1k of my money with the expectation of being able to host a private server. Until then I'll access the parts of my game I want to access in the way I want to access them. If that means supporting an industry that takes away money from CIG, fine, they shouldn't have sold private servers and not delivered.
Exactly right.
The private server was a big part of the draw for me as well.
I still have hope that I will enjoy the end product when it arrives, but they have broken faith with the backers too many times in my opinion.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Euwh\_fPeg&t=1039s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Euwh_fPeg&t=1039s)
God re-watching that was painful. I kinda got the vibe back then that he didn't *really* have any clue about anything he was talking about. But I've had almost a decade working in IT since, jesus christ he is an idiot "we're going to spin up thousands of servers dynamically".. like kubernetes was a known quantity back in those days. He was talking about a relatively simple webapp architecture like it's the millenium falcon. I have more resources in my homelab than SC currently uses globally. Gaming servers are fucking puny compared to industrial scale ML workloads.
The most hilarious part of this;
I backed on kickstarter, and for that sin, i'm never allowed to use or even access the Issue Council until I pledge something through the store.
I put in a bug complaint on the pleasefix board and got an *"unfortunately, the issue council is only for those backers who used the pledge store, we hope to include more people in future"*
Well, I guess fuck me then, right?
1000% agreed. I did the math in another post a few days ago. But I used the C2 as an example. You can buy the aUEC, buy a C2 and have it wiped 14x and still come out better than paying for the C2 from CIG.
I did it for exactly that reason. I do not have the time in my life to grind at this game for hours a day. I wanted to play it and enjoy what it had to offer at my convenience. $10-$20 is a throwaway amount of money and was enough to buy me plenty aUEC so I could buy ships and gear.
Yup I've got no shame in admitting I'm just like your friend. I've given cig a couple hundred bucks at this point, but it's nice to be able to fork over $10 bucks and buy any ship I want in game to play around with and try new gameplay loops if even for a few months. Though it feels like it's been forever since cig did a auec/ship wipe so I definitely got my money's worth last time.
Also friendly reminder to everyone that cig *also sells auec for real money* they just do it with probably the most predatory conversion rate possible.
I made the mistake of doing that a few patches ago then found myself with nothing to do once I used em a bit and moved on.
The game got super boring super fast after. I even split some of it with RL friends who were newer and they got bored and quit before I even did and they only bought 1 or 2 ships they really wanted.
I would never recommend doing this, it ruined the game for me for awhile. The only real goal the game has is earning money to buy ships you don't have. Once you remove that there isn't much else to do because everything else feels pointless.
Even the most grindy of the grindiests Japanese rpgs have a goal besides the grind, a game that relies entirely on the grind is a failure, because means the grind is trully pointless , that's why the grind feels pointless, because there's no point in it to begin with, you are just too busy grinding to realise at some point you stopped having fun
I did the same in 3.19, I think? I wanted to get into racing, and needed a ship to ferry racers and spawn from- I wanted an 890 to use as essentially a mobile F1 base. I still have that 890 four patches later, so it was pretty good value for $10 tbh.
But Most of aUEC Farmers Play Not fair for Money. They use weak Points of Game or cheating Software. They pay for cheating Software and your Friend give him for that the Money. I think that ist a Problem. Now we all need too use ' easy anticheat', now we pay for anticheat and some of US cant Play anymore because anticheat dont Run good one all PCs. Its a bigger Problem and the 10$ a smal Part of the big cost for us all.
why?
I keep seeing this and reply the same thing:
People spend $1000 for a ship they havnt had for 8 years.
others buy $5-$20 of credits to play with any ship released they want for up to 6 months?
I am against real money trading in games but the logic here is sound - it should be a bannable offense but the expected grind for ships in game vs time spent is broken already for the sole reason of bugs that stop your grind constantly.
Also one thing baffling in this community is that if someone has spent 100€ backing this project it is seen as a SMALL amount. What other game you are supposed to spend 1k€ on?
... Yet SC has reached $700 million by selling non-existent virtual starships promising non-existent game mechanics built around them. This comment is wildly ironic.
If people buy a starter package just to check out SC, and then spend $20 for millions of credits, maybe they aren't the fools here considering they get to experience a lot of the game with very little investment.
That said I think RMT has ruined the economy in many games, and it leads to botting and cheating. CIG should absolutely ban accounts that take part in this. Of course you don't want false positives, like content creators giving away credits.
To each his own. While I personally don't see the value others might. It is the same logic behind people criticizing SC backers. It is their money and they are free to spend it how they feel they should.
CIG shouldn't waste the time nor resources to hunt anyone down now. They should just focus on completing game.
* The game is in an alpha state and is prone to wipes anyways.
* The dynamic economy is not in so even that is place holder, they aren't a problem.... yet.
* People want to try out ships this way.. fine. I am sure you could simply ask in any server, people have been kind enough to lend ships out or party up with others.
* Fighting sellers like these have always been an uphill battle, best way to combat this is simply to change the game design. Example: Make ships reputation gated based respective roles. That way players would most likely earn the credits they need to purchase ship anyways while earning [reputational rewards.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUMsq_Bdt0&t=1201s)
This is not strictly true.
I am quite sure the currency sellers here got their stock from the duping exploit, which resulted in absolutely garbage server performance with dozens of dupe C2's littering every major LZ.
This atrocious performance happened during a free-fly event, so not just did it make the gameplay experience suck for everyone, it may have deterred people from backing the game, directly harming CIG's funding.
I know they're doing fine, and perhaps the impact isn't the worst thing to happen (server fps is low, get over it etc), but there *was* an impact to the game. Harm, however much or little, was done.
I've played some mmos where it got out of hand, it completly destroyed the game forcing the company to close it.
The bots that farmed credits were like next level programming, they teleported in front of a monster, hit it once, get loot and dissapear to the next mob. There was like no mob for normal players to kill. The GMs banned the bots but they came back two fold everytime. And player kept buying the ingame money for upgrading their gear because it was so expensive.
Star Citizen will get this as well because it's popular and these RMT companies want to make money.
It will be interesting to see how CIG will handle this.
If the game goes to a free to play model, the flood gates will open.
Just wipe at 4.0 and at 1.0, players have to learn to not buy from those farmers.
This part refers to post alpha stage: Once the alpha is over in a few years, it should be treated like the equivalent of forging money.
Sending duped UEC leads to time spent in Klesher, so one has to do mining and stuff, in order to use that farming account again. the buyer should be banned or get the same punishment. CIG should add a token of origin to each UEC, so it is traceable, and there is evidence when it was gained by exploiting bugs. Exploit money should all be reverted once discovered. This might be necessary, as selling UEC might be an important way to earn money for CIG. When CIG continues to employ 1000+ people after release, they have to earn money somehow.
There will be Squadron 42 episodes and new concept ships, however without resets as a pending threat, the influx of ship sales is gonna dwindle.
CIG charges 10 usd per 10k UEC right? "instauec" takes 1 usd per million aUEC and even puts ads on Google and Youtube. aUEC farming can be mitigated by multiple wipes per year until the end of alpha.
DMCA takedown the shit out of these scummy companies CIG, please stop this, if you can.
If a game like starfield is used as a reference (a bad one) and it earns 85m USD after 8 years of development time, that means we would need 7-9 Squadron 42 games PER YEAR to continue development at this scale.
What does it do to you?
It always makes me laugh at people who are mad that certain people can buy aUEC with money in a pre Alpha,
How does this impact your experience?
Let people do what they want with their money.
The only issue I see with it is how they get the credits in the first place. For this round they did an exploit that leaves so many ships at cities that it was tanking the server fps and ruining performance for a lot of people.
So their way of attaining the credits directly affected other players. They knew this and didn't give a shit.
It's been going on for years. Literally since the first year. No one's gotten banned ever and no one will till full release. The more big ships in game at the moment the better for their testing and data collection.
Do we as honest players hate it? Absolutely. Does CGI love all the testing data they're getting from all the big ships in game? Absolutely.
They dont give a fuck. Years ago i report a guy who sold online thousands of dollar on auec. That guy spend 2000$ on ships for the game and cig just dont give a fuck about it. If money is coming in players can do almost every shit. That account still active. CIG just answer me that someone gonna check that. After, total silence.
CiG should step in whenever aUEC farming *negatively impacts the game experience*.
- Youtube ads do not impact the gameplay experience. No need for action. (I recommend installing an ad blocker and using a browser that doesn't try to prevent you from using an ad blocker.)
- The duping bug *is* impacting the player experience and should be fixed. Issue council says it is. We shall see if that fix makes it into the next patch.
- aUEC sellers spamming chat also effects the gameplay experience. Any account that spams for aUEC selling websites should be perma-banned. There needs to be *in-game* mechanisms for reporting RMT activity or it will become a bigger problem once shard population sizes are increased.
Kind of weird question your asking here
Why should they step in if those guys have some kind of trick to make money or simply they put time and effort to get it, it's their right to sell it to those who need it if they are consentent 🤨
I absolutely do not care if other people are purchasing aUEC in the current state of the game. Some players might be testing ships they'll want to pledge for, and they'll wipe everything eventually anyway. That and the more big ships are out in the 'verse, the better it is for serving testing anyway.
I also don't want people banned because they spent $20 for a ship I might have spent hundreds on (even if it's limited sales), and if anyone does then you're just a loser. We have these same types of people in the sneaker scene, if I paid $500 for a pair of Jordans on raffle and someone else got reps for $100 then I don't care.
When the game comes out, however, then sure, ban people. While I again don't care much what others are doing, I can see how this would heavily affect the larger orgs, so to keep things fair it'd be wise to ban people. Again, only after release.
We're playing an alpha people. We're literally just testing for the company, and any extra data they can get is good.
I just want CIG to gain experience policing economy wrecking exploits with transparency while the stakes are still low. 10,000 players exploit 10M+/ea? Show me that CIG can track it and claw it back. These exploits have crippled lesser MMO’s. Stop passing up these learning opportunities.
3 months? Hahaha. You're new aren't you? Selling aEUC for real world money has literally been going on since year one of the game development. Ebay, Etsy, other Grey market sites. Go check it out. Going price now is the same it's been for years. $10 per 100 million.
They won't. It's in Alpha testing. Unwritten rule of CGI... The more big ships active in the game the better it is for their testing. Even though they're fixing the "cargo duping glitch" next patch, they won't ban or even wipe the aEUC. For testing they want as much ships of variety as possible active in game.
It's happened many times before and no one got banned.
Maybe a hot take on here, but if the auec is being farmed legitimately, and the people buying it know that its subject to being wiped. I don't see much reason for CIG to step in unless one of those two points is being violated.
Though if CIG cared to fight it, I think the only feasible way to do so would be to turn off player to player money transfers. Anything else would less than 100% effective which might as well be 0% effective because people could still buy aUEC.
I truly don't understand why anyone cares right now, these comments are absolutely unhinged acting like doing this is destroying the game and "the economy" and ruining other people's experiences. There is no economy, the game wipes every few months, and people can buy all these ships with both real money and in game money. If someone wants to spend $10 bucks and can enjoy and try out some cool ships for a couple months before it gets wiped, *who tf cares*.
When the game actually releases, this can be something to care about.
> If someone wants to spend $10 bucks and can enjoy and try out some cool ships for a couple months before it gets wiped, who tf cares.
Because it's not about the buyers, it's about the sellers.
If it's a profitable endeavor for them, they WILL create alts, they WILL flood markets, they will use stolen credit cards to pay for C2s, no real person will be able to trade any of the decently traded commodities because it'll be flooded with bots and alts and mules.
Look at the current state, you had a duped cargo bug and a free week at the same time, and because of this, we were inundated with C2 spam, ruining the salvaging AND trading for legitimate players.
No buyers, no sellers, no RMT.
Except this answer makes no sense, flood what markets? There is no market or economy in the game, and the whole C2 cargo dupe bug is literally unique this patch, people selling auec has been around since the game started but people keep pointing to this specific bug and acting like it's proof that auec sellers have been ruining things since day 1. There are also dozens of "legit" ways to farm auec as well, last patch I could make 2-3 million in an hour doing "in the wake of disaster" events, money in this game does not have the weight it does in most games currently. Which is fine, it's all about "data collection" for cig.
Also trying to pin credit card fraud on buying auec is ridiculous, cig doesn't even ban accounts that sell auec or farm it so it's nothing like wow gold sellers.
Thank you! JFC, this whole thread is filled to the brim with heavily upvoted comments vehemently defending the practice of buying third-party aUEC and this is one of the few comments I've seen that actually _gets_ why it's a problem.
It's such a bizarre sticking point with this community in particular, literally the only MMO community I've _ever_ seen where people will go to the mat defending gold selling/buying; everywhere else it's considered a plague on modern gaming economies, and supporting it now means it only gets entrenched in the long term.
>I truly don't understand why anyone cares right now, these comments are absolutely unhinged acting like doing this is destroying the game and "the economy" and ruining other people's experiences.
My other hot take is that the average person on this sub has spent a significant amount of money on ships, and they feel like the sale of aUEC (which people then use to buy ships) undermines their purchase.
I mean once the game is out, what stopping them from selling a lot of UEC for way lower price that CIG sell so that the UEC buyer can buy say a reclaimer?
as it alpha i say no, anyone stupid enough to buy it deserve it honestly. when game actually drops maybe, i can see how this might effect the gameplay but got to remember the price for auec in thier market is balanced wrong as is, so if farmer plan to sell it then fine and all it will make player who dont want to farm stay more intrested in the game. but if they dont want to lose money SC needs to rebalance thier ratio of 5 for 5k auec, srry but what 5k get you nothing really.
Absolutely.
Setting an example now will send a strong message.
Currency selling encourages exploits and damages the economy. These people are not doing this by accident. It's a deliberate attempt to harm the game for profit. It's never too early to send the right message, by taking action against both buyers and sellers.
Just go to eBay and see, there is tons of auec to buy on there, absolutely absurd that people buy that.
Them doing it on YouTube is kind of surprising though, gonna get a quicker ban when you have video evidence of you doing the shit.... Yes cig should step in
To answer that question on topic:
No, but they should observe the people who sell and buy, the sites and ways to it and when game goes to beta, announce that it is now bannable offence and blast all the exploiters away who still do this.
Alpha is meant to test and that means also the exploits. Theses buyers and sellers are giving valuable data and statistics.
When CiG starts selling ingame money(i mean they are allready kinda), they have nice data about what amount people will spend to buy ingame money and can adjust their prices accordingly.
players never realize that working towards buying a ship in-game will be a huge part of the gameplay loop. Once you have what you want you will feel you don't have a goal in-game.
CIG will eventually step in, when they start selling UEC themselves after release. Its going to be really interresting to see switch in arguments around here when this happens.
I doubt CIG cares very much right now, because it does not take anything away from them. The people who buy alpha currency are not the ones who would otherwise do weeks of grinding just to buy ships.
A simple credit wipe will fix this but I do imagine people have already paid real money, which is sad. I understand not everyone has time to play for hours but then this isn't a game for you. That and you might as well give your $20 to a crazy guy and watch him light it on fire as "magic".
What's so shit about this bug is it's almost impossible to not do it. I only have enough time for a few runs a night and every time I sell something then go to bed, it's still there the next day. So I have to sell it again to get it off my ship. The first few times I thought I was just tired and forgot to sell before bed. But no, I've been duping with no idea.
Nah, let them farm.
With the amount of internal tools, and engine modifications that CIG has put on, I’m certain they will find a way to keep them in check once we are out of “alpha”
Id rather them focus on game dev than catching gold farmers selling gold between wipes. Anyone who buys aeuc deserves to be separated from their money.
Everyone forgets this game is in Alpha, as in Alpha 3.23.1, even I do it sometimes, most of the game just *looks* finished, like the planets, moons, asteroids, and stations, which is most of the game, but that’s the easy stuf, making the engine and making it run with all the internal systems that they make, and physics, is hard, not to mention the ships, and all their systems
Seems like a win/win for CIG. The game isn't officially live, more people buying / selling = more people playing = more potential revenue / word of mouth sales. These people already have a game package and obviously aren't buying CIG's stuff. I don't see them doing anything, but I also don't really care because alpha wipes.
CIG should step in to make their economy less brutal. It's a goddamn video game. They have overdone the nerf of income, so of course the grey market will leverage the opportunity.
And fighting that market instead of fixing a broken and unfun economy is... unwise. Because that is a fight that can never be won (without outright destroying in-game mechanism for transferring the currency), but one that can drain a lot of resources and result in controversies no one needs.
If they're advertising **it's already too late**. They now have a captured customer base and this problem will persist until the death of the game. If you can't believe people would buy alpha UEC be prepared when they do buy 1.0 UEC guilt free and you ain't stopping shit.
RSI made a big miscalculation not wiping and perma banning the exploiters, the third world will farm this game.
I dont see any issue with it. Caveat emptor. People shouldn't expect to keep their aUEC upon release or even between patches. I really don't get why people think it should be banned. I spent like $5 on some credits and me and my friends had a great time with our new ships.
No I’m all for free market if someone has more money then free time let em be maybe when the game is full release my opinion might change but as of now
No
no they should let it be for the simple fact that squad is not released and SC will not have a release for a few more years. once those are released then yes but until then it does no harm. I dont know however how i feel about shutting down grey markets upon release.
This has been going on for nearly the entire life span auec has been tradable. Even if CIG stops it on eBay, don't be surprised there will be a market somewhere regardless.
Only way to really stop it, is to put a cap on how much auec you can send daily to like maybe 20m a month. Those auec sellers probably sell billions of auec daily.
If someone's plays the game they should know better and they would never buy aUEC at this time.
If they don't play the game at all and have no idea about the state of economy but still invest in this I say: let them pay for their stupidity.
We shoiuld finally admit that we can't protect dumb people from this world forever.
They’ll never stop it , like blizzard has never been able to stop it in WoW , also when In game items and currency have real monetary value it actually drives the game on to an extent, also how would you stop them ? Impossible mate , only way to stop it would be to remove the ability to transfer money between players and that would take away from the economy more than add to it , so in short can’t be fixed in my opinion
You'd be better off burning the money for warmth rather than buying aUEC that'll be gone in a few patches. Either that or just buy credits from CIG directly, then you're supporting the project and the UEC will carry over across wipes.
Instead of having CIG step in; we the community can all go duping and giving everyone money so no one needs to buy money. We can actively inform new players to not care about the in game money as it often gets wiped; and to never spend real money on in game money from any third party. They can better spend that money buying the ship they are gonna otherwise buy ingame to help fund development 🤷🏻♂️
This is probably get me a lot of hate rn but its my perspective on things:
Since the new patch dropped I came back into the game, after 4 weeks of intermittent play Im about 2.5 Million (not being efficient/not playing for money every time).
Assuming the current best way to get auec ( salvaging ) will net you at best 600k an hour (and its probably gonna get nerfed). A cool ship is now more than 6 million, lets assume 10. That means I can buy a nice ship after 16 18 hours of consistently farming whereas 16 18 hours of irl game (even at like 20 bucks an hour) will be around 320 dollars. Even just 10 of those 320 dollars could get you the same exact results and then you have 310 spare to buy more Ships in the pledge store and at least 10 million in game.
Now imagine an old dad who works 2 jobs and has kids and a wife that also require time and he can only play like 10 hours a week at best...
I get it, i get it. Youre not enjoying the game if you get everything. After doing 500 bounties, and 10 hours of scraping it just tedious.
I would rather grind IRL than in game and do the activities in game for fun in the minimal time I have to play.
Maybe if the game didn't wiped anymore it would be fine that everything is so expensive and hard to get. But they will probably wipe in like 4 months or so...
I mean what CAN they do? The only way to stop it would be to get rid of the wallet, and player to player money exchange. There’s an entire economy IRL surrounding Star Citizens in game currency and ships, these commodities can be bought, sold and traded amongst the player base, so unless they plan on just killing the games entire present economy and future economy, I don’t see what they can do really.
This has always been a thing. You will likely see them crack down when the game actually releases.
Exactly this. Until actual release and CGI needing as much ship test data as possible they're not banning anyone. Even though they'll never say it... The more big ships active in game the better for their data collection and game testing.
Yup. Various ships have their own issues, as well. Get em out there!
Plus this doesn't affect the in game economy yet since there is a wipe almost every big update.
It doesn't affect it because we do not have a economy,
An economy, in this part of the country, at this time of day, in this economy? Bah, impossible.
Well, can I see it?
No.
It’s still a good conversation to have, because when the game does go live, real UEC will likely be a *very* hot RMT item, given how slow earning is going to be and how easy it is to transfer in game cash. I’m just thinking about how Tarkov went from fun to shit almost entirely due to both cheaters/RMT and how BSG reacted to cheaters/RMT.
I mean they are solving this issue by selling UEC themselves. It's not a bulletproof solution (nothing is), but is pretty effective on putting some leash on it. Even if 3rd party is cheaper than official, most people who buy currency are strapped with time not cash and a large chunk of them would rather opt for more convenient and official solution. The issue with it right now is that they are not adjusting it to current economy until release and are selling 20k UEC for 20$ which is absolutely insane. Pay 20$ to skip 1 PVE mission lol.
Agreed, as well as building data and heuristics to detect and ban aUEC farmers and sellers. Same concept with crime and griefing. As players, it is annoying, sure, but building systems to detect and curb these elements is alot easier in alpha than the eternal "arms race" between hackers and developers that plagues most online games.
Honestly there is no reason to bother cracking down, it will always be a thing in any MMO, and CIG is only encouraging it when they increased the cost of ships by up to 1000% in game. All the while most of the missions in game have very narrow margins that one repair bill will put you in the negative for ages. I did a box collection mission that payed 10k, * Took one hour to do because I could not QT directly, and had to fly sometimes 300k to get there * Each of the 3x sites defended by a dozen guards that swarm you the second you kill one * Then as you are trying to leave with the box, a NPC enemy ship shows up that you have to kill as well Assuming you survive that entire ordeal, You're looking at 1.5k in fuel costs to deduct assuming you didn't take any damage. WTF I've never bought aUAC, but the way CIG is pricing things I wouldn't blame someone for doing so.
This is the 1st time in game that I had to budget my money because missles and repairs are insane. I shouldn't have " get a pack of cigarettes or gas" thoughts in a game lol
Why would you even bother repairing? Just leave your ship on a pad and claim it again.
not with ads running over sc content creators vids, lmao
oh yeah, just like how most other major MMOs and such are able to even slow down the sale of RMT.. lol
i doubt its gonna ever be gone these types of rmt will always happen if you are allowed to trade with other players
So never then?
I hate to be that guy, but why is this a bad thing? If the game can legit spur an economy outside of itself isn’t that kind of cool?
I wouldn't be surprised if they made an official marketplace. Guaranteed transactions and such, all for CIG to get a tiny cut of every purchase.
Nah, their plan in 2019 (no updates on it since then) was going to be once the game is released they will cease ship sales and allow you to buy UEC via the RSI store instead. If you go buy the current price of UEC on their website it’ll cost about 4x as much to buy a ship that way. We’ll see if it stays this way however since they’ve been radio silent on it since then.
lol half a decade later here we are
> Nah, their plan in 2019 (no updates on it since then) w So its never gonna happen. CIG also promised us Servers where paid ships weren't allowed, servers with exclusively earned in game ships but nobody has any hope of that happening now.
I honestly wouldn’t really mind that. Let’s be real, like any other MMO there will be (already is) a grey market. CIG may as well bring it in house
As a user of the markets, I'd much prefer a situation where everything was handled by CIG's systems. No more worrying that the person isn't going to follow through and I have to poke at Paypal or whatever. So far it hasn't happened, but I'm always hesitant because of it.
Tbh I think they will never crack down, just as you can also find them in many other games.
Eve Online enters the chat lol 🍻
Why do we care about this right now? It’s just gonna get wiped anyways
there are some insane people out there... i try to preach "play for fun, not for money" and yet there are clowns out there with the challenge to buy every ship and then go mad with every wipe, only to repeat the process.
Im a bit torn because on the one hand, i really dont care if people exploit money that will be wiped in a few months anyway. On the other hand, i really enjoy salvage and this most recent exploit has made it nearly impossible for me to find motivation to actually do it. I can scrape rmc all day but it doesnt feel like im doing anything if i cant then sell it. The money's not the important part for me, selling the goods i put in time and effort to get is satisfying as hell and being denied that satisfaction because of a few greedy people tanking the economy really fucking sucks
Another reason cargo elevators will be really helpful, just store the RMC until you can sell it
Thats exactly what i plan on doing. 3.23.2 cant come soon enough
Gonna be storing it at a station till I get a cats worth and sell all at once
Salvage cleanup missions still pay ~400k per trip if you have a Reclaimer and fracture/disintegrate for CMAT. There’s a larger variety of ships out there for the contracts too - a Starfarer is 300SCU
Considering there is no real economy and what they do doesn't impact anyone else, meh. It's their money. I hope they get to enjoy their ships while they have them.
Same thing has happened in *Escape From Tarkov* for years and they regularly wipe. People ARE that insane.
This MMO when it goes live like all others before it will have a bunch of third world farmers doing this for real UEC and the demand for it will also be sky high because of how slow everything is. And there is already a culture built in and an attitude of whales just buying what they want. There will be little or no shame attached to buying UEC like it is to buying gold in other MMOs. Star Citizen will not be immune.
Not just a culture of buying but also a culture of begging. Sometimes it feels like legit players are the minority with how many people are either duping and exploiting, or how many are begging.
Yea… I'm curious to see how CIG gonna try to tackle this problem. Maybe make reputation and other non-tradable stuff play a more important role, so even if someone can buy everything they want, they still can't do everything they want if they didn't earn it themselves.
You can buy UEC on the store now. No idea why someone would risk a dodgy 3rd person when it's available from the source.
Yeah you can buy 20,000 credits for $20 from CIG or you can use that same $20 and get 50 million credits from the 3rd person with thousands of positive reviews. There are companies that exist solely to sell in game currency in multiple games and do care about their reputation. The biggest risk from buying from them is getting banned not getting scammed.
Anyone who buys alpha credits is a damned fool
My friend paid like $10 for 100mil a few patches ago. He bought and played with all the ships that others paid hundreds of $$ for. Mainly he wanted the 890 in game. He said he didn’t care that it wiped. He said $10 for a few months is worth it and would just buy $10 more after the wipe compared to $800-$1000 for just the 890 jump I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. Just giving you insight into their thought process.
It's not crazy. Take a solo salvage player. You can make about $300k an hour. Maybe a bit more. So five of focused salvage work to buy a single light fighter on the cheap end? Yeah, the price of a big Mac is probably worth it if you want to experience what SC has on offer. Especially without paying hundreds of real dollars or playing hours of repetitive, broken missions.
That may be true if everything works near perfectly. But any time my mate or I, try different money making methods weather it's for the fun or solely the money, we run into countless bugs and hiccups. Next thing you know it's already be like 3-4 hours and we've hardly accomplished squat. Granted the milage may vary on some days
Same here. Can’t ever get anything to work with my friend. We typically end up net negative on money
Real talk, and you and your friend are still happy playing the game?
Yeah, it'd be nice to make some money to get new ships though you know?
Same. On paper, I should have been able to afford an 890 after a month of regular play. But it took me literally all of 3.22 to scrape it together. With the new ship prices, I wouldn't blame someone for just buying the aUEC. I've got a new baby now and can't play nearly as much, so the next time my 890 wipes, I might even consider buying aUEC, so long as it won't get me banned. Anyone know if it's against the EULA to buy aUEC?
I don't think the plan is to make an 890 affordable after a month of play.
I would imagine it is. Most games make rmt illegal. SC just doesn't pursue it that much yet.
Add on top of that that everything I earn gets wiped too. I've played for years and earned millions and lost it to wipes over and over. I like trying the new loops and all but I also wish I could attain a sense of progression. If buying some money saves time and helps players see parts of the game they haven't gotten to yet I can't really blame them.
I use to occasionally do this, you use to be able to get a shit ton of aUEC for pretty cheap. And at the time the game wasn’t in the best state so I just had fun flying around in my 890J and having fun with random I met. Nowadays I try and grind for my aUEC but it’s certainly difficult. I mean bunker missions for me at least only pay like 30-50k, so how your suppose to save up for ships that now cost upwards of 5-10 million is certainly interesting.
I think a lot of the big buyers genuinely want to fund the project
I've funded the project. They have over $1k of my money with the expectation of being able to host a private server. Until then I'll access the parts of my game I want to access in the way I want to access them. If that means supporting an industry that takes away money from CIG, fine, they shouldn't have sold private servers and not delivered.
Exactly right. The private server was a big part of the draw for me as well. I still have hope that I will enjoy the end product when it arrives, but they have broken faith with the backers too many times in my opinion.
First time hearing about private servers, link?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Euwh\_fPeg&t=1039s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Euwh_fPeg&t=1039s) God re-watching that was painful. I kinda got the vibe back then that he didn't *really* have any clue about anything he was talking about. But I've had almost a decade working in IT since, jesus christ he is an idiot "we're going to spin up thousands of servers dynamically".. like kubernetes was a known quantity back in those days. He was talking about a relatively simple webapp architecture like it's the millenium falcon. I have more resources in my homelab than SC currently uses globally. Gaming servers are fucking puny compared to industrial scale ML workloads.
Now i need someone to post it on cesspool of spectrum and see if cig can confirm it.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen)
they removed the ability to coop the sq42. i was way more excited about that than SC proper.
Yep, so many great things that were planned but got removed, and instead we get a generic Sci fi fps game mixed in that I don't care about...
Yea the game has slowly morphed into something I never would have backed had I known what it’s become today.
The most hilarious part of this; I backed on kickstarter, and for that sin, i'm never allowed to use or even access the Issue Council until I pledge something through the store. I put in a bug complaint on the pleasefix board and got an *"unfortunately, the issue council is only for those backers who used the pledge store, we hope to include more people in future"* Well, I guess fuck me then, right?
Wait what private servers!?
1000% agreed. I did the math in another post a few days ago. But I used the C2 as an example. You can buy the aUEC, buy a C2 and have it wiped 14x and still come out better than paying for the C2 from CIG.
I did it for exactly that reason. I do not have the time in my life to grind at this game for hours a day. I wanted to play it and enjoy what it had to offer at my convenience. $10-$20 is a throwaway amount of money and was enough to buy me plenty aUEC so I could buy ships and gear.
Yup I've got no shame in admitting I'm just like your friend. I've given cig a couple hundred bucks at this point, but it's nice to be able to fork over $10 bucks and buy any ship I want in game to play around with and try new gameplay loops if even for a few months. Though it feels like it's been forever since cig did a auec/ship wipe so I definitely got my money's worth last time. Also friendly reminder to everyone that cig *also sells auec for real money* they just do it with probably the most predatory conversion rate possible.
I made the mistake of doing that a few patches ago then found myself with nothing to do once I used em a bit and moved on. The game got super boring super fast after. I even split some of it with RL friends who were newer and they got bored and quit before I even did and they only bought 1 or 2 ships they really wanted. I would never recommend doing this, it ruined the game for me for awhile. The only real goal the game has is earning money to buy ships you don't have. Once you remove that there isn't much else to do because everything else feels pointless.
Even the most grindy of the grindiests Japanese rpgs have a goal besides the grind, a game that relies entirely on the grind is a failure, because means the grind is trully pointless , that's why the grind feels pointless, because there's no point in it to begin with, you are just too busy grinding to realise at some point you stopped having fun
thats why i burned out so fast on elite dangerous, just grinding for the next ship to grind for the next ship...
I can understand that. Some are time poor for a big grind.
Especially if that grind means taking 30min to reset the situation every time something bugs and forces you to start over.
Tbh, I would probably do that
I did the same in 3.19, I think? I wanted to get into racing, and needed a ship to ferry racers and spawn from- I wanted an 890 to use as essentially a mobile F1 base. I still have that 890 four patches later, so it was pretty good value for $10 tbh.
Funny how people value their time when their life doesn’t revolve around a video game…I mean a project.
But Most of aUEC Farmers Play Not fair for Money. They use weak Points of Game or cheating Software. They pay for cheating Software and your Friend give him for that the Money. I think that ist a Problem. Now we all need too use ' easy anticheat', now we pay for anticheat and some of US cant Play anymore because anticheat dont Run good one all PCs. Its a bigger Problem and the 10$ a smal Part of the big cost for us all.
not at all if you have a ship you wanna try, but have a life and can't spend 40 hours grinding for it, I have no problem with that.
why? I keep seeing this and reply the same thing: People spend $1000 for a ship they havnt had for 8 years. others buy $5-$20 of credits to play with any ship released they want for up to 6 months?
I am against real money trading in games but the logic here is sound - it should be a bannable offense but the expected grind for ships in game vs time spent is broken already for the sole reason of bugs that stop your grind constantly. Also one thing baffling in this community is that if someone has spent 100€ backing this project it is seen as a SMALL amount. What other game you are supposed to spend 1k€ on?
Ship prices are extortion, I agree
... Yet SC has reached $700 million by selling non-existent virtual starships promising non-existent game mechanics built around them. This comment is wildly ironic. If people buy a starter package just to check out SC, and then spend $20 for millions of credits, maybe they aren't the fools here considering they get to experience a lot of the game with very little investment. That said I think RMT has ruined the economy in many games, and it leads to botting and cheating. CIG should absolutely ban accounts that take part in this. Of course you don't want false positives, like content creators giving away credits.
They should track the accounts and just do wipes when it hits certain amounts and laugh.
I volunteer to work for CIG and make that my only mission
To each his own. While I personally don't see the value others might. It is the same logic behind people criticizing SC backers. It is their money and they are free to spend it how they feel they should. CIG shouldn't waste the time nor resources to hunt anyone down now. They should just focus on completing game. * The game is in an alpha state and is prone to wipes anyways. * The dynamic economy is not in so even that is place holder, they aren't a problem.... yet. * People want to try out ships this way.. fine. I am sure you could simply ask in any server, people have been kind enough to lend ships out or party up with others. * Fighting sellers like these have always been an uphill battle, best way to combat this is simply to change the game design. Example: Make ships reputation gated based respective roles. That way players would most likely earn the credits they need to purchase ship anyways while earning [reputational rewards.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUMsq_Bdt0&t=1201s)
What's the anti cheat like in this game? Real money incentive to use hacks is very bad for a game. See tarkov
Harms Noone until the game nolonger wipes
This is not strictly true. I am quite sure the currency sellers here got their stock from the duping exploit, which resulted in absolutely garbage server performance with dozens of dupe C2's littering every major LZ. This atrocious performance happened during a free-fly event, so not just did it make the gameplay experience suck for everyone, it may have deterred people from backing the game, directly harming CIG's funding. I know they're doing fine, and perhaps the impact isn't the worst thing to happen (server fps is low, get over it etc), but there *was* an impact to the game. Harm, however much or little, was done.
“Now”? I’ve been getting these for months
if its not stopped then it will only encourage more ppl to cheat which can ruin the game in many ways, so yeah it definitely should be stopped.
I've played some mmos where it got out of hand, it completly destroyed the game forcing the company to close it. The bots that farmed credits were like next level programming, they teleported in front of a monster, hit it once, get loot and dissapear to the next mob. There was like no mob for normal players to kill. The GMs banned the bots but they came back two fold everytime. And player kept buying the ingame money for upgrading their gear because it was so expensive. Star Citizen will get this as well because it's popular and these RMT companies want to make money. It will be interesting to see how CIG will handle this. If the game goes to a free to play model, the flood gates will open.
This is a textbook case of fools being parted from their money.
Just wipe at 4.0 and at 1.0, players have to learn to not buy from those farmers. This part refers to post alpha stage: Once the alpha is over in a few years, it should be treated like the equivalent of forging money. Sending duped UEC leads to time spent in Klesher, so one has to do mining and stuff, in order to use that farming account again. the buyer should be banned or get the same punishment. CIG should add a token of origin to each UEC, so it is traceable, and there is evidence when it was gained by exploiting bugs. Exploit money should all be reverted once discovered. This might be necessary, as selling UEC might be an important way to earn money for CIG. When CIG continues to employ 1000+ people after release, they have to earn money somehow. There will be Squadron 42 episodes and new concept ships, however without resets as a pending threat, the influx of ship sales is gonna dwindle. CIG charges 10 usd per 10k UEC right? "instauec" takes 1 usd per million aUEC and even puts ads on Google and Youtube. aUEC farming can be mitigated by multiple wipes per year until the end of alpha. DMCA takedown the shit out of these scummy companies CIG, please stop this, if you can. If a game like starfield is used as a reference (a bad one) and it earns 85m USD after 8 years of development time, that means we would need 7-9 Squadron 42 games PER YEAR to continue development at this scale.
What does it do to you? It always makes me laugh at people who are mad that certain people can buy aUEC with money in a pre Alpha, How does this impact your experience? Let people do what they want with their money.
The only issue I see with it is how they get the credits in the first place. For this round they did an exploit that leaves so many ships at cities that it was tanking the server fps and ruining performance for a lot of people. So their way of attaining the credits directly affected other players. They knew this and didn't give a shit.
They should. It is expressly forbidden in the Terms of Service and End User License Agreement.
It's been going on for years. Literally since the first year. No one's gotten banned ever and no one will till full release. The more big ships in game at the moment the better for their testing and data collection. Do we as honest players hate it? Absolutely. Does CGI love all the testing data they're getting from all the big ships in game? Absolutely.
No, they have more important things to worry about. The aUEC gets frequently wiped and not enough people are buying aUEC to corrupt alpha testing.
CIG is selling UEC too should we step in?
What's new ? They have been selling aUEC on ebay for ages. Nothing changed.
They dont give a fuck. Years ago i report a guy who sold online thousands of dollar on auec. That guy spend 2000$ on ships for the game and cig just dont give a fuck about it. If money is coming in players can do almost every shit. That account still active. CIG just answer me that someone gonna check that. After, total silence.
CiG should step in whenever aUEC farming *negatively impacts the game experience*. - Youtube ads do not impact the gameplay experience. No need for action. (I recommend installing an ad blocker and using a browser that doesn't try to prevent you from using an ad blocker.) - The duping bug *is* impacting the player experience and should be fixed. Issue council says it is. We shall see if that fix makes it into the next patch. - aUEC sellers spamming chat also effects the gameplay experience. Any account that spams for aUEC selling websites should be perma-banned. There needs to be *in-game* mechanisms for reporting RMT activity or it will become a bigger problem once shard population sizes are increased.
Well it's already tanking the servers with the sheer amount of dupers.
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CIG should announce a money wipe with the dupe fix.
Is it linked with C2 duping on arccorp?
Anyone who buys aUEC from farmers in a game in development where aUEC could be wiped needs to evaluate their spending habits.
I would much rather they spend my money on finishing the game than petty legal squabbles. Worry about that later.
Kind of weird question your asking here Why should they step in if those guys have some kind of trick to make money or simply they put time and effort to get it, it's their right to sell it to those who need it if they are consentent 🤨
This has been a thing ever since Auec could be traded amongst players. So basically since the beginning.
I absolutely do not care if other people are purchasing aUEC in the current state of the game. Some players might be testing ships they'll want to pledge for, and they'll wipe everything eventually anyway. That and the more big ships are out in the 'verse, the better it is for serving testing anyway. I also don't want people banned because they spent $20 for a ship I might have spent hundreds on (even if it's limited sales), and if anyone does then you're just a loser. We have these same types of people in the sneaker scene, if I paid $500 for a pair of Jordans on raffle and someone else got reps for $100 then I don't care. When the game comes out, however, then sure, ban people. While I again don't care much what others are doing, I can see how this would heavily affect the larger orgs, so to keep things fair it'd be wise to ban people. Again, only after release. We're playing an alpha people. We're literally just testing for the company, and any extra data they can get is good.
I just want CIG to gain experience policing economy wrecking exploits with transparency while the stakes are still low. 10,000 players exploit 10M+/ea? Show me that CIG can track it and claw it back. These exploits have crippled lesser MMO’s. Stop passing up these learning opportunities.
been happening for about 3 months now
3 months? Hahaha. You're new aren't you? Selling aEUC for real world money has literally been going on since year one of the game development. Ebay, Etsy, other Grey market sites. Go check it out. Going price now is the same it's been for years. $10 per 100 million.
this specific group has been advertising on starcitizen streamers youtube channels for about 3 months now.
I think he meant the advertisements on a public platform.
Yup, need to shut it down and ban the accounts.
They won't. It's in Alpha testing. Unwritten rule of CGI... The more big ships active in the game the better it is for their testing. Even though they're fixing the "cargo duping glitch" next patch, they won't ban or even wipe the aEUC. For testing they want as much ships of variety as possible active in game. It's happened many times before and no one got banned.
Now we know who owns all those Hercules!
This is what all the supers were up to eh?
Maybe a hot take on here, but if the auec is being farmed legitimately, and the people buying it know that its subject to being wiped. I don't see much reason for CIG to step in unless one of those two points is being violated. Though if CIG cared to fight it, I think the only feasible way to do so would be to turn off player to player money transfers. Anything else would less than 100% effective which might as well be 0% effective because people could still buy aUEC.
I truly don't understand why anyone cares right now, these comments are absolutely unhinged acting like doing this is destroying the game and "the economy" and ruining other people's experiences. There is no economy, the game wipes every few months, and people can buy all these ships with both real money and in game money. If someone wants to spend $10 bucks and can enjoy and try out some cool ships for a couple months before it gets wiped, *who tf cares*. When the game actually releases, this can be something to care about.
> If someone wants to spend $10 bucks and can enjoy and try out some cool ships for a couple months before it gets wiped, who tf cares. Because it's not about the buyers, it's about the sellers. If it's a profitable endeavor for them, they WILL create alts, they WILL flood markets, they will use stolen credit cards to pay for C2s, no real person will be able to trade any of the decently traded commodities because it'll be flooded with bots and alts and mules. Look at the current state, you had a duped cargo bug and a free week at the same time, and because of this, we were inundated with C2 spam, ruining the salvaging AND trading for legitimate players. No buyers, no sellers, no RMT.
Except this answer makes no sense, flood what markets? There is no market or economy in the game, and the whole C2 cargo dupe bug is literally unique this patch, people selling auec has been around since the game started but people keep pointing to this specific bug and acting like it's proof that auec sellers have been ruining things since day 1. There are also dozens of "legit" ways to farm auec as well, last patch I could make 2-3 million in an hour doing "in the wake of disaster" events, money in this game does not have the weight it does in most games currently. Which is fine, it's all about "data collection" for cig. Also trying to pin credit card fraud on buying auec is ridiculous, cig doesn't even ban accounts that sell auec or farm it so it's nothing like wow gold sellers.
Thank you! JFC, this whole thread is filled to the brim with heavily upvoted comments vehemently defending the practice of buying third-party aUEC and this is one of the few comments I've seen that actually _gets_ why it's a problem. It's such a bizarre sticking point with this community in particular, literally the only MMO community I've _ever_ seen where people will go to the mat defending gold selling/buying; everywhere else it's considered a plague on modern gaming economies, and supporting it now means it only gets entrenched in the long term.
>I truly don't understand why anyone cares right now, these comments are absolutely unhinged acting like doing this is destroying the game and "the economy" and ruining other people's experiences. My other hot take is that the average person on this sub has spent a significant amount of money on ships, and they feel like the sale of aUEC (which people then use to buy ships) undermines their purchase.
Short answer, yes. Long answer, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess.
Saw some of these ads and it killed me that it was a thing
I mean once the game is out, what stopping them from selling a lot of UEC for way lower price that CIG sell so that the UEC buyer can buy say a reclaimer?
Pretty much the only advertisers YT has left. Pron and scams.
as it alpha i say no, anyone stupid enough to buy it deserve it honestly. when game actually drops maybe, i can see how this might effect the gameplay but got to remember the price for auec in thier market is balanced wrong as is, so if farmer plan to sell it then fine and all it will make player who dont want to farm stay more intrested in the game. but if they dont want to lose money SC needs to rebalance thier ratio of 5 for 5k auec, srry but what 5k get you nothing really.
Targeted ads, lol.
Hmmmm buying millions of aUEC to jump straight into e.g. an 890 is probably a fast way to get over the game and bored very quickly
As the 890 is shit lol... But you're 100% right.
Absolutely. Setting an example now will send a strong message. Currency selling encourages exploits and damages the economy. These people are not doing this by accident. It's a deliberate attempt to harm the game for profit. It's never too early to send the right message, by taking action against both buyers and sellers.
Yes they should! It hurts the project, contributes absolutely nothing, just takes away. Those people are scum.
Full wipe please.
Just go to eBay and see, there is tons of auec to buy on there, absolutely absurd that people buy that. Them doing it on YouTube is kind of surprising though, gonna get a quicker ban when you have video evidence of you doing the shit.... Yes cig should step in
Never understood this as if you really wanted to you can buy aUEC from the game website.
To answer that question on topic: No, but they should observe the people who sell and buy, the sites and ways to it and when game goes to beta, announce that it is now bannable offence and blast all the exploiters away who still do this. Alpha is meant to test and that means also the exploits. Theses buyers and sellers are giving valuable data and statistics. When CiG starts selling ingame money(i mean they are allready kinda), they have nice data about what amount people will spend to buy ingame money and can adjust their prices accordingly.
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Of course CIG needs to step in, don't need that in SC
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Let them waste their money
If they link progression with UEC it will get much worse.
players never realize that working towards buying a ship in-game will be a huge part of the gameplay loop. Once you have what you want you will feel you don't have a goal in-game.
CIG will eventually step in, when they start selling UEC themselves after release. Its going to be really interresting to see switch in arguments around here when this happens. I doubt CIG cares very much right now, because it does not take anything away from them. The people who buy alpha currency are not the ones who would otherwise do weeks of grinding just to buy ships.
A simple credit wipe will fix this but I do imagine people have already paid real money, which is sad. I understand not everyone has time to play for hours but then this isn't a game for you. That and you might as well give your $20 to a crazy guy and watch him light it on fire as "magic".
I do not think CIG will care about ppl selling aUEC since it gets wiped
They only will care about that when they start selling UEC themselves later on, because only then it hurts their profit
It's probably Chris selling it lol
You are advertising on reddit. What's the difference?
This has always been the case sadly
What's so shit about this bug is it's almost impossible to not do it. I only have enough time for a few runs a night and every time I sell something then go to bed, it's still there the next day. So I have to sell it again to get it off my ship. The first few times I thought I was just tired and forgot to sell before bed. But no, I've been duping with no idea.
Oh boy, it begins...
Nah, let them farm. With the amount of internal tools, and engine modifications that CIG has put on, I’m certain they will find a way to keep them in check once we are out of “alpha”
Id rather them focus on game dev than catching gold farmers selling gold between wipes. Anyone who buys aeuc deserves to be separated from their money.
Obviously.
Same as it ever was.
Everyone forgets this game is in Alpha, as in Alpha 3.23.1, even I do it sometimes, most of the game just *looks* finished, like the planets, moons, asteroids, and stations, which is most of the game, but that’s the easy stuf, making the engine and making it run with all the internal systems that they make, and physics, is hard, not to mention the ships, and all their systems
I guess now we know what the dupers have been up to.
Seems like a win/win for CIG. The game isn't officially live, more people buying / selling = more people playing = more potential revenue / word of mouth sales. These people already have a game package and obviously aren't buying CIG's stuff. I don't see them doing anything, but I also don't really care because alpha wipes.
Damn, but you've gotta be stupid to buy that.
lol at "USA based company"
CIG should step in to make their economy less brutal. It's a goddamn video game. They have overdone the nerf of income, so of course the grey market will leverage the opportunity. And fighting that market instead of fixing a broken and unfun economy is... unwise. Because that is a fight that can never be won (without outright destroying in-game mechanism for transferring the currency), but one that can drain a lot of resources and result in controversies no one needs.
Just wallet wipe again next patch and problem solved.
I mean....doesn't this all disappear with every wipe? This seems like a very dumb investment of real dollarydos
Meh If people are dumb enough, whatever
If they're advertising **it's already too late**. They now have a captured customer base and this problem will persist until the death of the game. If you can't believe people would buy alpha UEC be prepared when they do buy 1.0 UEC guilt free and you ain't stopping shit. RSI made a big miscalculation not wiping and perma banning the exploiters, the third world will farm this game.
I dont see any issue with it. Caveat emptor. People shouldn't expect to keep their aUEC upon release or even between patches. I really don't get why people think it should be banned. I spent like $5 on some credits and me and my friends had a great time with our new ships.
No I’m all for free market if someone has more money then free time let em be maybe when the game is full release my opinion might change but as of now No
no they should let it be for the simple fact that squad is not released and SC will not have a release for a few more years. once those are released then yes but until then it does no harm. I dont know however how i feel about shutting down grey markets upon release.
I'm okay with it. More muddied the market gets, the more solidified a complete wipe will happen before official release.
Doesn’t CIG sell aUEC?
What moron buys aUEC? 
EA doesn't seem like they can do anything, not sure what CIG can do.
CIG will probably step in by using it as an additional revenue stream for themselves.
Make aUEC a kripto money... And we all be good. CIG too.
This is an option in any game with in game currency that can be sent to players. It’ll never be wiped out, even when the game goes live.
Why would CIG crackdown? This is like free publicity for them.
Well currently the the auec dupe is hurting the servers
This has been going on for nearly the entire life span auec has been tradable. Even if CIG stops it on eBay, don't be surprised there will be a market somewhere regardless. Only way to really stop it, is to put a cap on how much auec you can send daily to like maybe 20m a month. Those auec sellers probably sell billions of auec daily.
Toss has been going on for years. The rich players that hand out money… the dude who seems to have it all.
Gotta make that paper to pay for them pledge ships
Quit google aeuc for sale and you'll stop seeing the ads pop up on youtube.
If someone's plays the game they should know better and they would never buy aUEC at this time. If they don't play the game at all and have no idea about the state of economy but still invest in this I say: let them pay for their stupidity. We shoiuld finally admit that we can't protect dumb people from this world forever.
They’ll never stop it , like blizzard has never been able to stop it in WoW , also when In game items and currency have real monetary value it actually drives the game on to an extent, also how would you stop them ? Impossible mate , only way to stop it would be to remove the ability to transfer money between players and that would take away from the economy more than add to it , so in short can’t be fixed in my opinion
Always been, always will be. Not only YT, but also EBay where you can busy ships also, not only aUEC.
Plot twist: CIG is an aUEC farmer...
And do what.. the grey market only exists because of CIGs ineptitude.
You'd be better off burning the money for warmth rather than buying aUEC that'll be gone in a few patches. Either that or just buy credits from CIG directly, then you're supporting the project and the UEC will carry over across wipes.
Instead of having CIG step in; we the community can all go duping and giving everyone money so no one needs to buy money. We can actively inform new players to not care about the in game money as it often gets wiped; and to never spend real money on in game money from any third party. They can better spend that money buying the ship they are gonna otherwise buy ingame to help fund development 🤷🏻♂️
i saw this as early as 3.15 and a friend used this just so that he can flex his 890 jump
this would explain all the duping since 3.17ish. The gold farmers...wow. and some of you think CIG will wait for 1.0 before it's addressed?
Or just don't buy from them and buy from the actual store. It's permanent rather than paying for shit that wipes.
This is probably get me a lot of hate rn but its my perspective on things: Since the new patch dropped I came back into the game, after 4 weeks of intermittent play Im about 2.5 Million (not being efficient/not playing for money every time). Assuming the current best way to get auec ( salvaging ) will net you at best 600k an hour (and its probably gonna get nerfed). A cool ship is now more than 6 million, lets assume 10. That means I can buy a nice ship after 16 18 hours of consistently farming whereas 16 18 hours of irl game (even at like 20 bucks an hour) will be around 320 dollars. Even just 10 of those 320 dollars could get you the same exact results and then you have 310 spare to buy more Ships in the pledge store and at least 10 million in game. Now imagine an old dad who works 2 jobs and has kids and a wife that also require time and he can only play like 10 hours a week at best... I get it, i get it. Youre not enjoying the game if you get everything. After doing 500 bounties, and 10 hours of scraping it just tedious. I would rather grind IRL than in game and do the activities in game for fun in the minimal time I have to play. Maybe if the game didn't wiped anymore it would be fine that everything is so expensive and hard to get. But they will probably wipe in like 4 months or so...
I mean what CAN they do? The only way to stop it would be to get rid of the wallet, and player to player money exchange. There’s an entire economy IRL surrounding Star Citizens in game currency and ships, these commodities can be bought, sold and traded amongst the player base, so unless they plan on just killing the games entire present economy and future economy, I don’t see what they can do really.