First and foremost, STOP your Marketing team. Put them back on a leash, or they WILL destroy what little of loyal backer community you have with their decisions. They have REPEATEDLY shown total lack of connection between themselves, the actual game and the player base. You DON‘T need to monetize every damn thing, PTU included. This situation with PTU access would’ve gone a lot smoother if there was no concierge or subscribers involved AT ALL. Just the players who not only play based on hours, but also have a proven history of quality IC reports (not reports titled “I can’t even”). Concierge already has its’ perks (hopefully more will come with the 4-year ago promised revamp). Subs have their perks too. Concierge members give you what they do because they want to support the project, first and foremost. Subs pay for video production. Period. If you need money, do these things: * Rethink what you show on ISC. VFX is cool (best fire I’ve ever seen in any game, ever btw), but players want to see progress on Gameplay loops most of all. Ships are the other thing players want to see most. Like the current Polaris progress for example. Even a little hint about Gameplay loops goes a much longer way than the most decorated ISC about how RaStar works, for example. No offense to RaStar devs and I’m sure it’s a great tool, but players want to see what’s coming their way soon(tm) more. This is what drives hype that in turn generates content for players and creators to talk about. I have more than one job and to keep up with updates, as well as listen to interesting takes on things, I sub to and support a few creators whom I find interesting and whose videos/podcasts I listen to on my way to and from work. You know what most of them say lately? Week after week it’s the same: content drought. I’m not even going to mention how bad I feel for those creators who chose to make a living popularizing Star Citizen when you have zero information to share. Yeah, it’s their choice, but it’s also your fault for making people believe you can sustain a steady content delivery flow starting way back at the 2018 CitCon. FYI, the RaStar episode would have been a great SCL game dev episode instead, because players who watch SCL game dev episodes know what they are going to watch and will likely come because they like this stuff. * Prioritize bug fixing of most reported player bugs whenever possible. Even if (insert tech here) is going to replace it. At the pace new tech is introduced, it makes sense to dedicate a dev to find and squash a pressing bug in the legacy tech. This is how you get money from new backers that come from streamers and creators that WON’T then be talking about how bad the game is, and instead praise it for what it actually is, and older backers who see progress and open their wallets again. Fun gameplay without game breaking bugs such as invisible players, ships and asteroids, horrible desync and physics glitches will make SC more inviting to play for the average gamer, and people who have been holding off recommending the game to their friends will be able to do so without feeling bad about it. I get it that server meshing (aka the next magic tech) is supposed to fix server issues, but nobody knows when that’s coming. It’s not even being worked on full-time according to the Progress Tracker, as all the departments involved have people working on Server Meshing part-time, according to the Tracker. * Since the current big ship being worked on is the Polaris, deliver it in a timely manner. Don’t put a pin in it like you did with the last big ship. Show us you can make and tackle the large backlog of ships, and the floodgates of money spent on concepts will once again open. If you focus on backlog and show you can deliver, you will no longer need to spend time making ready to fly ships so much. Concepts, even small ones, WILL sell then like they have before. I understand that large ships are ultimately going to have resource gameplay and engineering gameplay. However, we’ve had the Hammerhead for years and people still enjoy crewing that thing despite the miserable state it’s currently in, and that creates organic fun. To finish this one off, speaking for myself, I am always ready to buy a big ship concept for the lucrative LTI and the exclusive paint. I have not been doing so lately because I don’t believe these big ships will be delivered in my lifetime. * Make a proper character repair tool, as a way to get all the sub gear back, so players can show off their exclusive stuff to others without fear of losing it until you find an in-game solution for this. When the game is released, you can make a decision whether or not a player should permanently lose sub flair items. It makes no sense to lose them in alpha. This is how you drive subs and sub flair purchases. I’ve bought armor and flair before because it looked cool. I melted all of it now because it’s pointless to wear anything other than gear looted or bought in game, and not because of other players, but guess what? Because of BUGS. I have WAY more chances to die to a bug in the game than to another player. If I get pirated / killed in game and my sub gear gets looted, it’s on me. If I die and lose the items due to a bug you haven’t fixed for 3 years - it’s on you. You only have to listen to us on some things we all agree on, and we we will be eager to help. Thank you.