^ Does a $5m budget dictate indie-game status? Do you need $80m to make a full-price game? Maybe I don't know?

It's a game that people are going to have a blast playing and will want to keep playing it for decades to come. :) 

You haven't really answered the original questions I posed in the opening post.

You probably paid $59.99 for Fallout 4 and (are partially to blame for Bethesda's laziness in not upgrading/optimizing/replacing the engine). Should SCR have the same amount of content and last that long?

Also, how you feel Stardock can make the game (not the story or dialog) interesting for 60+ hours when SC2 didn't have enough fresh content or mechanics to support 10 (again excluding story or dialog)?

Quoting Vaelzad, reply 27

It's a game that people are going to have a blast playing and will want to keep playing it for decades to come.  

You are such a troll. LOL

The reason I mentioned indie status of SC is that SD mentioned $30-40 price range for the game somewhere. That's high-end indie. Definitely not a "AAA" game status. I, personally wouldn't like meager 20hr gameplay for $60. Unless it's strictly main quest line time.

Sounds like Civilization type of franchise. Defo not indie. I expect Civ level of polish. 

Well, the problem here is two-fold, Nobody!!

1) Saying that Star Control II is light on fun after 10 hours if you don't include the story and dialog... is like saying chocolate chip cookies taste like regular flour, if you don't include eggs, butter and chocolate chips. So, we agree there. SCII would have been a terrible game if you just land on planet after planet picking up resources for no real reason and no tie-in to a story. I've actually played a ton of games that tout how many upgrades you can get by doing meaningless task after meaningless task. But I also played Space Miner on IOS, which kept me enthralled from start to finish because of its fun, irreverent story and characters. And it MADE that game's mechanics fun, while in a different situation, they'd be boring. Which... by the way... if you guys have never played, is a frickin awesome game that's MORE like Star Control II than almost any other game (besides SPaZ)!!! And if you separated everything, I would have played for 20 minutes. But if you put them all together, and they had extended content indefinitely, I would have played indefinitely!! Which brings me to my next point...

2) Your opinion (and it is definitely that, just like my also-opinion, is on the opposite end of the spectrum) that the content and mechanics didn't last 10 hours before becoming stale just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm gonna have to start my own poll to see if anyone agrees with that. Maybe @awkbird, since he +1'd you with Karma on that post. But I highly doubt that people thought the mechanics of Star Control were stale after visiting maybe 50 stars. I THINK they are timeless. And wondrous. And innovative. And if the story had gone on, and there had been more upgrades? I would have played even longer. And if the story wasn't forced to end after a certain number of years in-game, I would have played even longer than that. The CORE mechanics are some of the best I've seen - akin to why people play Fallout or Skyrim for hundreds of hours - because the whole exploring-killing-looting thing is VERY VERY FUN.

So who's to say, Stardock won't make a story and exploration system and upgrade # that supports a 60 hours game? Then, by your own admission, it wouldn't be stale by then, right?

Does anyone else think Star Control only has maybe 20 hours of fun in it, total, regardless of story length???? 

I really have to point out here that with "full featured" multiplayer for this genre, 1v1 & 2v2 dueling, base defense, capture the flag, and space hockey... people would be playing this game for many, many years.  A lot more people than most would imagine.  I have long believed that this is a "lost genre" that has the potential to still be popular today.  Only first person shooters rival this genre in their suitability for online play.  Top down space combat games are like FPS games in many of the same ways that make FPS games so well-suited to online play, for example you can pop into either to play for just 10 or 15 minutes if you want.

Subspace was supposed to be a test of networking in the early days of online games... it exploded to over 5 million registered users and was second only to Ultima Online in registered users.  They didn't advertise it, it wasn't even supposed to be a game that people played.  It just exploded, because this is an inherently popular genre that was forgotten simply because it was not 3D.

If you build it, they will come:-)

I am still interested in hearing what your price point and expected play time is. I sincerely want those data points. 

You are focusing on the low end of my estimations which is a bit unfair. I don't expect everyone to take 20h, and in fact, I anticipated my time investment to be closer to the high end of 50 for the main game. (Longer for SuperMelee, but that's different.)

Something else for you to consider was that I opened this post after playing Mad Max. I felt that game had some similarities with what SCR would offer based on SC2. (I don't expect many to see them, so people can save the comments.) Mainly it was in the game's limited mechanics that while fun for awhile, got repetitive. SCR runs the same risk because the original's exploration mechanics don't change much over the course of the game. (And there was also that nasty spending cap which didn't help.)

So yes, I would support a longer play time if there was more non-repetitive exploration and mechanics that expanded in ways other than adding better scanning abilities or more durable landers.

Preach on, brother Kavik.

I didn't spend $99 for another RPG.

I don't know of any RPGs with these types of multiplayer zones...  I don't see how it is like an RPG at all.

I was agreeing with you, saying that I bought into the founders program for SuperMelee and not the RPG portion of the game.

Ah, I didn't understand what you were saying at all.  Now I get it.

I am looking forward to the adventure game, but that will be something that I will enjoy for a couple weeks.  The multiplayer, if more than just dueling is there, I will be playing online for years.  Dueling gets boring fast, but objective based "mini-games" like base defense, capture the flag, and hockey stay fun forever.  If it has those it will have a long life online, more people will be playing than I think anyone other than me would expect:-)

If you want you can finish SC2 in under an hour, and if you want you can also finish it in an even shorter actual play time if you start the game, get a few items, go to a quiet place in hyperspace, then leave the game running and go watch a movie.

When you come back the Kohr-Ah will have killed everyone you still needed items from so you can just land on the planet and get them, then go finish the game.

You get the same ending, even though nearly every sentient species you were supposed to be helping are now extinct =P

Of course you could also not use a walkthrough and go through the (hopefully just as immersing) story of the new SC in your own pace, then go online and play some Super Melee for hours, and then if SD did their jobs right you want to just play that singleplayer again, just for the story.

How many hours you will get out of the new SC will be entirely up to yourself if SD do the job right IMO.

SD has to deliver a good game, you have to decide if you like it enough.

Personally i hope it will have a good story that makes me want to play it again, just like SC2 did, and good multiplayer, just like SC2 did and i couldn't care less about RPG or having things to do outside of the story or not.

If it gives me as much replay value as a game from 1992 i still play at least once a year i wouldn't see why it should be budget priced at all.