Time for Subscription Service?

FatzDomingo

F
I don’t have a lot of time in Elite Dangerous, about 750 hours over the years. and I play Solo, I’m retired now and have plenty of time it seems to play online just maybe not so much Time left to enjoy it…🤫 A Spinal Injury resulting in multiple surgeries led to my being away until quite recently, “I have returned” as they would say. I play console games online with my equally retired mates, keeps us sane and out of the Pub. (Could sit on my big easy chair to play on the Consoles but couldn’t sit for more that a few mins at my PC….sorted now though…thank you Surgeons)

The preamble was just for some context. I play ESO on Xbox, the Subscription is about £10pm. I really don‘t miss the money and I do get something back for it. Be mindful that ESO has brought in about £2 Billions for its owners and still going strong and still counting. Now, how could that principle be carried over to Elite Dangerous?

Well, here’s some suggestions I would happily pay a Subscription Service for.

1: Unlimited Storage in whichever location you designated as your Home Port
(when you want to change ships, go to something smaller, your nearly fully laden miner or trade ship doesn’t empty out and destroy your cargo or limpets - You just simply jump into your other ship and off you go, everything is still in your newly parked ship unless you Transfer the Contents to Storage and never run out of space)

2: Your Engineer, based at your home Port, has the ability to Scavenge resources and materials for you. (If you log in each day he has a list of goodies he’s managed to find for you…all random and with the chance of being some juicy items. The more you play, the algorithm rewards you with better quantities and quality of mats. Don’t log in on a particular day….no free goodies that day for you.

3: Once you’ve done the initial Unlock of the Distant Engineer you no longer require to pilot all the way with your current ship to advance through the levels of Equipment Engineering, your local guy receives instructions from the remote Engineer on what to do. Same Mats required, just a journey saved….and Time.

4: Ship Salvage. The ability to find crippled, abandoned ships. Tractor Beam them to a suitable Port and sell, repair or strip out all of the goodies. Should make possible interdictions fun. (The game mechanics could be that once you reach your Port/Station, you cut the Tractor Beam and hand over the Salvaged Ship to Local Authorities, they transport/manage it into your Hanger for you….for a fee of course)

5: All DLCs included in the Subscription Service, stop the Service lose all of the benefits and you need to purchase the “Freebies DLCs” to continue (The Benefits to you Lifetime Members must be tangible and Fair..something like 50% Subs for you and greatly enhanced daily goodies from your Engineers scavenger hunts. Perhaps your loyalty gets you Thargoid Matériels on your daily hunt?)

6: Genuine Trading Market. Unwanted Goodies up for sale or Auction?

The list isn’t exhaustive, most of your ideas would be better than mine. I want Elite Dangerous to continue, well looked after by FD and enjoyed by us armchair Pilots. We might even see VR getting some TLC, now wouldn’t that be something?

If FD went for this in principle and made it work, they’d never kill a cash cow.
 

DYSEQTA

DYSEQTA
I don't mind the idea of an optional subscription model al la ESO what I don't agree with is that it comes with any tangible benefit not available to those without it. I would be fine with the subscription dollar value in ARX but that's it. The advantage to Frontier would be the consistency of the income and the player just gets what they would have got from buying ARX anyway.
 

CMDR Daiyus

CMDR Daiyus
If there were a subscription model it must be optional, and not allow access to any gameplay element not available for pay-to-play users. The ships they're planning to sell are based on stuff we can all get in game with a bit of work, the Python Mk.II will come free to all who have the latest game (bought Odyssey).

For me a subscription would look something like getting a number of ARX per month, maybe with a small discount on store costs. Basically a way to continue using the already available financial support systems in a more consistent manner, with a minor out of game benefit.
 

Hampsonian

Hampsonian
I do understand the fears, and in an ideal world nobody would have to pay for anything. Sadly we're not in an ideal world.

Taking the commercial factors that are in play here, and from working in a cruelly commercial environment myself (print publishing) where every penny you spend counts (and has to be recouped two-fold), Frontier has to make money somehow, otherwise there's no game.

I doubt they have massive amounts of money to fund development of new stuff in Elite, so they need to make money.

Clearly people buying skins and ship kits etc isn't cutting it, so they have to monetise whatever they can.

I've had an absolute crap-ton of entertainment out of this game for years and years. I could spend what Elite cost me down the pub in one evening quite easily, or on a takeaway. Or two maybe. So I really don't mind putting my hand in my pocket every now and then.

On another note, I noticed that Aisling Duval's self-appraisal in one of the pre-release screenshots shown in the livestream said she's a 'socailite', so if Frontier wouldn't mind correcting the typo I'd be very grateful...
 

Leadfoot

Leadfoot
FatzDomingo said:
The preamble was just for some context. I play ESO on Xbox, the Subscription is about £10pm. I really don‘t miss the money and I do get something back for it. Be mindful that ESO has brought in about £2 Billions for its owners and still going strong and still counting. Now, how could that principle be carried over to Elite Dangerous?
Click to expand...
The idea of a subscription-based service has been floated a number of times earlier in Elite's life.

I can see some advantages to that sort of thing:
  1. It can provide a constant, steady income to FD to keep the servers up.
  2. Could possibly provide ED with the ability to provide BETTER servers so we don't have so many disconnect issues.
  3. Could possibly provide enough income to get those much-wanted features of atmospheric planets.
And the disadvantages of that sort of thing:
  1. A lot of people don't care to do subscription games.
  2. A lot of people will simply not pay the subscription and drop the game. They're used to playing it for free, paying for cosmetic additions only. That's the way the like it. That's the only way they'll play it.
  3. If this was designed to be EVE but with a full 1:1 galaxy on steroids and everyone expected to pay a monthly fee at least people would have been able to decide to buy it or not. It's not a good idea to change horses in mid-stream.
If Elite 5 comes out as a subscription service I'd have to make a hard decision as to whether or not I wanted to buy it. I'm semi-retired now on a fixed income and have to watch my pennies. A single-player game, i.e., Starfield, is a one-time purchase and you play when you want and quit when you wish. It doesn't cost me a monthly fee. Neither does ED. If I need to walk away from ED for a while, do I pay a monthly fee just to keep "my" lights on?

So, no, a monthly subscription would not be acceptable to me. Don't misunderstand me, I get your point. But many players, myself included, would not care to have a monthly subscription added for any reason.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Yea, but... Nah, No, Nope.

And about the subscription thingie? You're about 11-12 years late to the party.
It was decided long time ago that players dont want a subscription based game. And even today the vast majority of players would rather stop playing than pay a subscription
In my own case, i could pay subs, but certainly nor for all my 3 accounts. Maybe 2, but not 3.

The sad and weird thing is, in these days, people are finding more acceptable to have micro-transactions in their games than to pay a subscription, and more often than not, they end up shelling more money than paying a sub.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
I'd uninstall to be honest. Even with the list of stuff above, that's not enough for me to want to pay a fixed monthly amount.

Add the following and I'd reconsider:
A new ship created every quarter
Further optimisation for Odyssey
Something put in place for better instancing.
Plans to overhaul superpower rankings for long term playability.
Greater visibility on future expansions (no way am I paying a subscription for a game that's already feature complete).
All livestreams to be ended with an interpretive dance in suitable hats.
 

aRJay

aRJay
A slightly more viable option might be a metered payment system where you pay per hour played which at least has the benefit of not costing you if other life gets in the way of playing.

But to be honest I think the overheads of running it would be to high and it would only be slightly less obnoxious than a subscription.
 

Kimosabe_X

K
aRJay said:
A slightly more viable option might be a metered payment system where you pay per hour played which at least has the benefit of not costing you if other life gets in the way of playing.
Click to expand...
So how much should the fee for a hour of playtime be ? Tencent ?





;)
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
A subscription would be my preferred way of monetizing this game, but not in the way OP described with it getting you extra things, just a flat rate you pay monthly to play the game, assuming that would mean nothing but cosmetics ever being sold for ARX. I am not asking for this or saying I think it would be a good idea for Frontier to implement this, it is just a monetization method I am comfortable with, as it is an upfront agreement that X gets me Y.
 

ZombieF1

ZombieF1
I wish the game had have had a low monthly subscription fee since the beginning - with a subscription free tier perhaps. Even 1$ per month would have meant millions of dollars - and a better game - by now.. with more players...

At this point I could only see a kind of sequel to the game being able to start using a subscription model - which we may well never get now.
 
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