As a beta backer who bought into the life-time DLC package - I've been doing some thinking about the future DLC.
I look forward to planetary landing.
and
I Look forward to walking/flying round my ship with in-ship shenanigans (mopping fuel spills, fixing components, staving of boarders or sneaking onboard other ships)
and
I look forward to doing external EVA.
and
I look forward to walking round space stations.
Now, I'm under no illusion that despite a huge variety of art assets, and modularised designs that we can always distill a simple ruleset of how to react that will make things feel samey (similar to stations being either a slot or platform, and stars and planets being spheres with different colours).
That being said, I habour a desire to see all this delightful content to be released free of charge, as an ordinary update.
FREE DLC ->
THE BIG ISSUE OF NONE-SHARED INSTANCED CONTENT
Now I find it hard to swallow, that frontier can balance the paid DLC player base antics, with that of the standard player base.
Imagine that you are happily playing along with friends, and suddenly you or your buddy disapears behind the paid walls of DLC content.
They or you land on a moon to do some mining. They have to stay in orbit, waiting for you to appear.
Or mid combat, your ship powers down and gets boarded.
You're screaming for backup to help stave off the raiders, but your mate hasn't paid DLC that enables his bottom to leave his seat and go EVA.
or Vice versa, your attacker doesn't have the option to board you, where as you have the option to run around fix modules and repell boarders.
Instead of taking their time to board your ship, they just blast you out of the sky, because that is the limitation of their standard gameplay choices.
My mind starts screaming at the insane amount of scenarios and experiences that are gated and segued from paid DLC players and Standard Version ED players, that will seam unatural ,converluted, bizare, unbalanced and unrewarding.
Why people need to pay
Regardles of weird gating and filtering players from certain expereinces that are happening to other commanders hundreds of meters to them (#comms crackle to life "how is that toxic fuel spill in the cargo bay going?"......"fun mini game, wish you were here to see it"......"I'm watching your twitch feed")
A lot of commanders have paid UPFRONT to experience those things.
Suddenly Frontier having free DLC is an afront to those early backers (like myself). That would be unfair, and that would make people angry, right?
And what about Frontier themselves, they just got paid for copies of the game upfront during Kickstarter/alpha/beta/gamma.
This is the only source of revenue Frontier has to support this and other projects.
Unless an up and comming game Frontier develop is an equal success.
DLC is the only way the developers will see money come in to pay their wages to see that they can implement the new content and drive the upkeep of it.
Summary and discussion
How do you see this? Free DLC for ever, or everyone has to pay-to-play.
Would you rather have a consitent player universe where all commanders can indulge in all the same experience saving lots of weird design/gameplay headaches? At the expense that a number of people just paid the basic price ander other paid double the game price.
or
In fairness you'd rather split the player base, so paid beta customers get their "fair" paid for share of content, and the developers get paid for their hard work.
I look forward to planetary landing.
and
I Look forward to walking/flying round my ship with in-ship shenanigans (mopping fuel spills, fixing components, staving of boarders or sneaking onboard other ships)
and
I look forward to doing external EVA.
and
I look forward to walking round space stations.
Now, I'm under no illusion that despite a huge variety of art assets, and modularised designs that we can always distill a simple ruleset of how to react that will make things feel samey (similar to stations being either a slot or platform, and stars and planets being spheres with different colours).
That being said, I habour a desire to see all this delightful content to be released free of charge, as an ordinary update.
FREE DLC ->
THE BIG ISSUE OF NONE-SHARED INSTANCED CONTENT
Now I find it hard to swallow, that frontier can balance the paid DLC player base antics, with that of the standard player base.
Imagine that you are happily playing along with friends, and suddenly you or your buddy disapears behind the paid walls of DLC content.
They or you land on a moon to do some mining. They have to stay in orbit, waiting for you to appear.
Or mid combat, your ship powers down and gets boarded.
You're screaming for backup to help stave off the raiders, but your mate hasn't paid DLC that enables his bottom to leave his seat and go EVA.
or Vice versa, your attacker doesn't have the option to board you, where as you have the option to run around fix modules and repell boarders.
Instead of taking their time to board your ship, they just blast you out of the sky, because that is the limitation of their standard gameplay choices.
My mind starts screaming at the insane amount of scenarios and experiences that are gated and segued from paid DLC players and Standard Version ED players, that will seam unatural ,converluted, bizare, unbalanced and unrewarding.
Why people need to pay
Regardles of weird gating and filtering players from certain expereinces that are happening to other commanders hundreds of meters to them (#comms crackle to life "how is that toxic fuel spill in the cargo bay going?"......"fun mini game, wish you were here to see it"......"I'm watching your twitch feed")
A lot of commanders have paid UPFRONT to experience those things.
Suddenly Frontier having free DLC is an afront to those early backers (like myself). That would be unfair, and that would make people angry, right?
And what about Frontier themselves, they just got paid for copies of the game upfront during Kickstarter/alpha/beta/gamma.
This is the only source of revenue Frontier has to support this and other projects.
Unless an up and comming game Frontier develop is an equal success.
DLC is the only way the developers will see money come in to pay their wages to see that they can implement the new content and drive the upkeep of it.
Summary and discussion
How do you see this? Free DLC for ever, or everyone has to pay-to-play.
Would you rather have a consitent player universe where all commanders can indulge in all the same experience saving lots of weird design/gameplay headaches? At the expense that a number of people just paid the basic price ander other paid double the game price.
or
In fairness you'd rather split the player base, so paid beta customers get their "fair" paid for share of content, and the developers get paid for their hard work.
Last edited:
