LIFETIME Expansion pass, and Python Mk2

[Ian Doncaster]

Maybe because at the time the game didn't have micro transactions and they paid double the price of the game to support development.

The ARX-as-game-currency wasn't a thing, but Frontier were open from the start about their intent to partially fund the game in future through microtransactions [1], and they were never counted as part of the LEP (or expected to) even when they were just a few basic ship paints bought directly for £s.

Anyone paying the original LEP price (merely "paid double") has already "won" anyway - cost £85, for which you got the original Elite Beta (£50), Horizons+Beta+pre-order bonus (£35, I think?), Odyssey+Alpha+pre-order bonus (£50) and a few extra cosmetics (equivalent price at the time about £10, I think, though whether you count those may depend on whether you'd actually use them...)

It's the people who bought the one offered just before Horizons who got a bad deal - cost from memory ~£170, and they probably already owned the base game, so they're about £80 down and the chances of recovering any more of that any time soon seems pretty low.

[1] With the current price increases, maybe just "transactions".

 

[Scoob]

I think there would be a lot more joy on the forums if those that were there to support ED from the earliest days, and those that later trusted FDev enough to deliver substantial additional content for their really quite expensive LEP, were actually granted access to the Python II now. I for one would be feeling all warm and fuzzy, knowing FDev appreciated that early trust in them. The real money cost of the Python II is moot for me, I'll not be buying it nor using my gameplay-acquired ARX to pay for it.

The whole LEP gives Beta access - aka early access to things - yet the LEP not granting early access to the Python II seems... distasteful. I see why they give it to Creators, free advertising of course, but the early backers were there was no ED to cover...

Ah, first world problems.

Aside: do we know what percentage of the active player base are LEP holders? I mean, how many potential sales are FDev set to lose if they give the Python II to LEP holders right away?

 

[Cosmo]

Oh i made the mistake and bought the LEP at 170€ back then.
FDev told me i get all future updates for free, and there will be a lot updates as the game goes on.
So i payed 50€ for the Game when it came out and 170€ when Horizons did arrive, I cant remember what Horizons did cost 30 or 40€ ? I think so.
So i thought i could be a good deal but i need at least 4 updates to come close to break even with it.

10 years of updates, new content, features, gameplay reworks, 2 full expansions and 1 season of free updates (Beyond is the equivalent of an expansion) is a lot of stuff. If you feel it's not enough, that's your opinion. LEP owners should still get future DLC for free as well (excluding microtransactions in the store).

Elite does lack a good training for new players and a lot stuff is not explained. You have to figure out by your own.

Yes, many players quit, because there's no decent in-game tutorials. They have to use external sites and videos to learn how to play.

It wastes my free time by beeing in supercruise 50-90% of the time playing.
It wastes my time, because i have to collect materials of all kinds to access Engineering ship, suit and weapons.
Even if you find a option to speed that up it gets deleted from the game so you have to spend even more time to do so.

What FDev did miss is add new fun content, instead they did add more time wasting content and that leaded in decreasing players.
Doin stuff you dont like and gets boring, drives players away.

Has this changed by now or in the next update? I think not. Every time i log into Elite to do something, i have to do time wasting things.

ED does have a lot of grind and time wasting. Travel time has been reduced with Supercruise Overcharge. The Engineers grind should be reduced soon.

 

[fennster]

It's the people who bought the one offered just before Horizons who got a bad deal - cost from memory ~£170, and they probably already owned the base game, so they're about £80 down and the chances of recovering any more of that any time soon seems pretty low.

It was £130 the last time it was available, plus a £10 loyalty discount if you already owned the base game.

Elite Dangerous: Lifetime Expansion Pass - Elite: Dangerous - Games

<p><em>Elite: Dangerous</em> is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic, bringing gaming’s original open world adventure to the modern generation with a connected galaxy, evolving narrative and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full

web.archive.org

I think it might of been approximately €170 at the time due to exchange rates.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Aside: do we know what percentage of the active player base are LEP holders?

No, only Frontier has that data, though almost certainly <1% for any reasonable definition of active. There were never that many LEPs sold to start with, based on Frontier's deferred income statements.
(Whether the sort of person who buys a LEP is more or less likely to buy early access to a ship is an unanswered question too, of course)

It was £130 the last time it was available, plus a £10 loyalty discount if you already owned the base game.

Thanks - so, not quite as bad as I remembered. So worst case would be if you did own the base game, bought the LEP for £120, and had currently got £85 of definite use and ~£10 of ARX-substitution use out of it.

One more big expansion would sort that one, then, which is I guess still not completely implausible to hope for.

 

[Scoob]

No, only Frontier has that data, though almost certainly <1% for any reasonable definition of active. There were never that many LEPs sold to start with, based on Frontier's deferred income statements.
(Whether the sort of person who buys a LEP is more or less likely to buy early access to a ship is an unanswered question too, of course)


Thanks - so, not quite as bad as I remembered. So worst case would be if you did own the base game, bought the LEP for £120, and had currently got £85 of definite use and ~£10 of ARX-substitution use out of it.

One more big expansion would sort that one, then, which is I guess still not completely implausible to hope for.

Potentially a very small amount for what I would expect to generate proportionally more good will. I.e. FDev look after their LEP holders.

Thought: LEPs were, I suspect, offered at a time when FDev needed the extra injection of cash to the project to keep things running / maintain intended development progress. Aka LEP holders really helped keep the game going...

Do we realistically expect that there will ever be a Horizons or Odyssey level expansion in the furture? I mean, when I backed, I expected there to be more personally. Horizons was great, years later Odyssey not so much. Two expansions for a "expansion pass" plus some free paint jobs etc. doesn't seem like an over-generous level of content to me. I'm not particularly fussed, I'll carry on doing my own thing, play with the Python II in August, unless I go all outdoorsy for a while, due to good summer weather lol.

I do genuinely wish FDev luck with generating additional game revenue to keep the servers on. We all benefit from that. Plus, I'm sure many actually enjoy purchasing in-game content in a variety of titles. £10 for a ship, £10 for a coffee and a sandwich, is it really that different. I'm just not one of those myself. A solid bit of DLC, done that. Cosmetic items? Nope, not interested. Individual ships? I'll wait, thank you.

As a blast from the past. I recall when I bought the original Total Annihilation back in the day, and they started releasing FREE downloadable additional units. I thought that was the most amazing thing. Then they added Skirmish mode and other feature over time. I was also relatively new to having internet access at the time, and only got my first PC in 1995 - the day W95 realised, what a sugar show that was lol.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Potentially a very small amount for what I would expect to generate proportionally more good will. I.e. FDev look after their LEP holders.

Thought: LEPs were, I suspect, offered at a time when FDev needed the extra injection of cash to the project to keep things running / maintain intended development progress. Aka LEP holders really helped keep the game going...

The original KS-era ones, yes - Frontier were offering anything and everything with varying degrees of sensibility to get the KS over the line and LEPs certainly weren't their most regrettable decision. Probably not the Horizons-era ones so much.

Do we realistically expect that there will ever be a Horizons or Odyssey level expansion in the furture?

I'm not expecting another one. That scale of packaging either in sell-then-build (Horizons) or build-then-sell (Odyssey) hasn't worked out particularly well for Frontier.

If they can figure out a way to do a more self-contained one that really only takes a year to develop then it might be possible ... but still quite risky, so I wouldn't expect anything like that to be considered until and unless their "more management sims" strategy gets the company back to comfortable profitability.

 

[Cosmo]

Do we realistically expect that there will ever be a Horizons or Odyssey level expansion in the furture?

Yes if enough people support ED via buying cosmetics and pre-built ships. There's a bunch of important stuff to be added such as: EVA (outside ship), more planet types (weather, ocean, fauna, flora), ship boarding, ship interiors, base building. Base building in particular has much cosmetics potential.

I mean, when I backed, I expected there to be more personally. Horizons was great, years later Odyssey not so much.

Odyssey wasn't good when it launched, but it is now after 18+ updates.

Two expansions for a "expansion pass" plus some free paint jobs etc. doesn't seem like an over-generous level of content to me.

Beyond is basically an expansion spread over a year of major updates.

 

[Scoob]

Odyssey wasn't good when it launched, but it is now after 18+ updates.

I understand it's improved, however, it wasn't really the sort of content I was looking for. I personally wanted more spaceship stuff, and Odyssey being known as "space legs" perhaps shifted expectations. I mean, I have no legs in space, only on the surface. For me, Horizons added interesting content, Odyssey added nothing. So, just one out of two DLC hitting the mark for many players. So, I got value from Horizons, but nothing from Odyssey, speaking personally.

 

[Fixitman]

edit: but yea, they seem to manage to miff off everyone - which is quite a rare feat

They only managed to miff me off once, and that turned out to be AMD's fault

 

[Kimosabe_X]

I think it might of been approximately €170 at the time due to exchange rates.

Well I paid 162,50 EUR for my LEP in August 2015 and that already included a discount for owning (!) Horizons as I pre-ordered that first and finally decided after that to get a LEP. So I guess personally I'm about 110 EUR short in the equation.
Not considering any paintjobs, etc. into this as I never "asked" for that stuff and at the end FD stopped providing the LEP owners with midnight paints for the latecomer Alliance shps anyway. At least I only have the one for the Chieftain and iIrc I bought that some time later. And it feels like that was ages ago and FD ditched the LEP concept prematurely...

Can I live with my initial decision about the LEP ? Of course... Am I miffed about the outcome of the LEP and FDs handling of it, for sure !
And so every time it comes to any point where anything possibly LEP related rises up, my "miff-factor" rises, too.

And in my humble opinion it would have been a perfect occasion to at least show some appreciation and love to the remaining LEP owners and give them early access to the Python Mk II, too, without any extra payment. The possible financial loss of this special move would have been marginal at best, but the gain, or at least upkeep of reputation - thinking of the new prices in the Arx store here.. - might have been remarkable.

Well that's my 2 ct. nah... 162,50 EUR... But as ever, ymmv though.

 

[Weps]

Honestly I didn't care much about the topic when this thread started, but now I see myself slowly drifting towards the unhappy side. And the reason is the new details about the PMKII that are emerging. Apart from it being a new ship and coming with a different loadout possibilities than other ships and so on..., it now seems that it brings a whole unique gameplay feature: the ability to use SCOs without wobbling. That's gameplay in my book, not cosmetics.

What's stopping FDEV from adding new gameplay expansions behind vehicle enablers, like mining SLFs, or water world exploration submersibles, or ammonia world anti-Thargoid combat mechs etc. etc., and making the respective EA not 3 months, but maybe 6 months or 12 months?

But just to keep it simple: for me the LEP meant access to all the gameplay features, all the time. And now this seems to no longer be the case, even if we're talking about a miniscule feature, made inaccessible for a miniscule amount of time.

 

[Montague]

10 years of updates, new content, features, gameplay reworks, 2 full expansions and 1 season of free updates (Beyond is the equivalent of an expansion) is a lot of stuff. If you feel it's not enough, that's your opinion. LEP owners should still get future DLC for free as well (excluding microtransactions in the store).

It's not enough compared to buying the expansions separately. The LEP got me two expansions that I did not have to buy individually. All players got the 10 years of updates, etc. And Beyond was free for the entire playerbase, not just LEP holders. If people want to rationalize that they got good value for the cost of the $180 LEP, that's fine. Whatever helps you sleep at night. But from a money standpoint, nine years later it would have been more cost effective to buy Horizons and Odyssey at release instead of in advance through the LEP. If Frontier someday releases more paid expansions, the LEP will pencil out, but no one knows if that's going to happen.

 

[House0fDerp]

P2 isn't a microtransaction - advanced access to it is. The P2 is being added as part of Odyssey in August so LEP could have been given access now as it would have been in the spirit of the LEP.

ah well - this week it doesn't seem fdev are trying to keep anyone happy

The LEP players are literally getting what expansion buyers get as part of the expansion. That would seem to satisfy the function of the LEP, no?

Early access isn't part of the expansion, hence expansion owners not getting it, so asking that LEP players get it is asking for something more than the thing the LEP says it does.

 

[Cosmo]

It's not enough compared to buying the expansions separately. The LEP got me two expansions that I did not have to buy individually. All players got the 10 years of updates, etc. And Beyond was free for the entire playerbase, not just LEP holders.

Beyond and the other updates that were free of charge also costed money to develop. That hidden cost is not included in your valuation.

But from a money standpoint, nine years later it would have been more cost effective to buy Horizons and Odyssey at release instead of in advance through the LEP. If Frontier someday releases more paid expansions, the LEP will pencil out, but no one knows if that's going to happen.

The LEP is not only about getting a return on investment. Because, it's also about helping a developer to continue developing a game. I think there will be more major updates (some paid) in the future. How else are they going to add more detailed planet types, EVA, ship interiors, base building? If they add those features then it's definitely more value than the LEP imo.

 

[Jmanis]

The LEP players are literally getting what expansion buyers get as part of the expansion. That would seem to satisfy the function of the LEP, no?

Early access isn't part of the expansion, hence expansion owners not getting it, so asking that LEP players get it is asking for something more than the thing the LEP says it does.

The bottom line for me is, bluntly, it takes weasle-words and fragile logic to justify LEP not getting access to it, which opens up a world of possibilities which would be outright unacceptable.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The bottom line for me is, bluntly, it takes weasle-words and fragile logic to justify LEP not getting access to it, which opens up a world of possibilities which would be outright unacceptable.

Although I feel you are right, what was the role of the value bundle LEP / KS guys got (the one with snowflakes and other things)? Was that FD drawing a line under the LEP /KS?

I would say though it is a very grey area- after all we still get beta access.

 

[Kimosabe_X]

Beyond and the other updates that were free of charge also costed money to develop. That hidden cost is not included in your valuation.

That "hidden cost" is not a part of a customers part of the equation, imho. Those (financial) risks is up to the company

The LEP is not only about getting a return on investment. Because, it's also about helping a developer to continue developing a game. I think there will be more major updates (some paid) in the future. How else are they going to add more detailed planet types, EVA, ship interiors, base building? If they add those features then it's definitely more value than the LEP imo.

I still don't get it why you are always riding on paid major updates/DLCs... as we all should be able to make an educated guess and will most likely come to the honest conclusion that there might be some "major updates" but most likely/nearly sure not another paid DLC...

MY 2 ct. though. ymmv obviously... ;-/

 

[Jmanis]

Although I feel you are right, what was the role of the value bundle LEP / KS guys got (the one with snowflakes and other things)? Was that FD drawing a line under the LEP /KS?

I would say though it is a very grey area- after all we still get beta access.

No idea... i didn't even realise that was a thing. Even then, that sort of thing doesn't count in my opinion, and FD shouldn't do that sort of thing (that is, giving cosmetics under the LEP), because of exactly that grey zone.

It's like the time i ordered a product, and i got something else worth substantially more, because they were out of the product i ordered. I sent it back, and got a refund, because bottom line, I paid money for something else, not that.

FD padding out LEP with skins as a means to make up for a lack of value when it comes to a content pack is not acceptable. "We didn't have the A5 wagyu steak you paid $100 for... so here's $100 worth of 3- star beef mince".

 

[Cosmo]

That "hidden cost" is not a part of a customers part of the equation, imho. Those (financial) risks is up to the company

Well if you really want to calculate the cost of all the stuff we got for ED in 1 decade then that should be included. People take all those free updates for granted, but they could've sold it as an expansion.

I still don't get it why you are always riding on paid major updates/DLCs... as we all should be able to make an educated guess and will most likely come to the honest conclusion that there might be some "major updates" but most likely/nearly sure not another paid DLC...

How would they provide a hypothetical Planet DLC with weather, clouds, oceans, rivers, lava? I think it'll be sold to recoup the costs. Maybe less expensive than Odyssey.