Ahh, I didnt realise that. Maybe thats what someone else was trying to explain but never made there point very well. Yes thats a bit unfair if it means you would pay a total of £350 to get what alot of people spent £200 on. To be honest the beta is the place to be as I dont think missing out on the as yet is that big a deal.
Alpha package: no perks
- Thread starter vintager
- Start date
Ahh, I didnt realise that. Maybe thats what someone else was trying to explain but never made there point very well. Yes thats a bit unfair if it means you would pay a total of £350 to get what alot of people spent £200 on. To be honest the beta is the place to be as I dont think missing out on the as yet is that big a deal.
Actually - from a software developers point of view. The less people involved in the initial testing of a feature the better the feedback and the more controlled the process can be.
If Frontier had everyone who backed ED in the Alpha it would be a cacophony of noise - multiple bug reports for the same issues, lots and lots of different hardware to try to cope with etc. Lots of people dealing with lots of downloads as things are updated (increasing FDs bandwidth cost etc.) Basically it would not help.
Once the basics are working and initially balanced, then you open it up to more people to get a larger range of hardware and testers. Once you are happy you then open it up to more to test volumes, load testing etc.
Basically each step needs to be controlled, and the easiest way to control that is by the size of the testing groups. By pricing the Alpha, Beta 1 and Beta 2 access as they did, FD knew they the groups would decrease in size due to the price.
I can appreciate your point of view about access to the later betas etc. But as FD offered those of a reward to the early backers (Kickstarter) they can't go back on their word and offer this free now.
Pricing policy is a poor and ultimately self-defeating tool of assessing one's qualification, let alone a horrible move from the PR perspective.
Whether you belong to the hypothetical "elitist rich" depends not so much on the amounts you spend, but rather on what you spend the money on. If you're investing 700€ in a new guitar (let's imagine for a moment you're a guitarist), then you're a regular bloke with a regular, maybe even below average, income. If, however, you're spending the very same 700€ to buy yourself a new tie, then yes, by all means you're one of the "elitist rich".
But this is not even the point, this has never been the point. The point is, there is a lot of people who could've been helpful for alpha testing, who have the necessary money, but who cannot justify parting with it without additional incentive.
The goal is not to assess individual qualifications, the goal is to cheaply (profitably!) select a suitable (not optimal) pool of alpha testers. Some members of that pool might be terrible or lazy testers but it doesn't matter as long as enough of them are not ... which I believe the high fee helps to guarantee.
What would be a horrible move from a PR perspective would be to give cheaper access to newcomers than has been given to those who put their money up over a year ago, when there was little to see and no firm guarantees that there would ever be.
More people would only be helpful if there are not currently enough people. I've not heard that that's the case.
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The additional incentive is getting access right now. Simple as that. Its been how many years since the last Elite? Plus practice with the flight model and thrusters which will stand in good stead once the game goes live.
I bought into another Alpha level game, IL2 Battle of Stalingrad and it cost $93 or something like that.. You get access to 2 of the 10 aircraft for 3 days a week. With ED, its on, no messing about waiting for the weekend
I bought into another Alpha level game, IL2 Battle of Stalingrad and it cost $93 or something like that.. You get access to 2 of the 10 aircraft for 3 days a week. With ED, its on, no messing about waiting for the weekend
In summary:
I don't need perks, but mentally I need perks.
Well that's just ridiculous, if you are not a mental being then what are you?
You make no sense at all.
Just buy the damn alpha or don't.
But are you - I see the occasional Porsche in the garages on suburban Estates.
Different people value their interests differently.
The fact that you don't consider something of value is offset by others that do - I am not sure you are going to get a better explanation.
And is being Rich an unforgivable crime? The phrase elitist rich implies it (ok not your phrase)
It is often a simple sign of competence in a well paid field.
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I'm in exactly the same position and again thank everyone that do post up YouTube vids and do the live streams of the alpha, it keeps the anticipation level up. It was a wise decision on FD's part to not put any NDA in place for the Alpha, it probably has been one of the most successful marketing tools for the game and there has been an amount of media coverage...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/13/hands-on-with-elite-dangerous/
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/16/elite-dangerous-single-player-alpha-released-for-backers/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...rous-now-playable-if-youre-a-200-alpha-backer
http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852854/elite-dangerous-alpha-ready-for-december
I also did not go for the Alpha uptake, partly due to cash, partly due to time. I'm very happy with my pledge level from December last year (1st Beta access) and eagerly look forward to that release, when I look at the add-ons that came with that pledge level, they seem extraordinary.
I can however appreciate why some latecomers feel there is little available to them from the store, it is sparse at present. I would certainly hope this is addressed early next year, in prep for the 1st Beta stage, as this I would expect to have an even greater draw for newcomers and fans of the genre.
How do you surmise that the selected pool is "suitable"? I agree it is by no means optimal, but how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is suitable at all?
There's a "Help support Elite" signboard right there at the top of the main page; if you click on it, there's a huge "JOIN THE ALPHA" poster, so the only logical conclusion is that you're mistaken.
That's exactly how it looks right nowThe perk is: You buy now, and play within 30 minutes time
You play within 30 minutes for 30 minutes, that is.It is, first of all, a sign that you live in a certain country with a certain average income.
I happen to reside in a EU country that has a significantly lower salary rate than in England (and I mean specifically England, not Scotland or any other part of the UK). The cost of living is also much lower here, but that doesn't affect our subject matter, does it?
How do you surmise that the selected pool is "suitable"? I agree it is by no means optimal, but how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is suitable at all?
There's a "Help support Elite" signboard right there at the top of the main page; if you click on it, there's a huge "JOIN THE ALPHA" poster, so the only logical conclusion is that you're mistaken.
That's exactly how it looks right now
It is, first of all, a sign that you live in a certain country with a certain average income.
I happen to reside in a EU country that has a significantly lower salary rate than in England (and I mean specifically England, not Scotland or any other part of the UK). The cost of living is also much lower here, but that doesn't affect our subject matter, does it?
Well i think you ought to complain to your own gaming industry for not making a game that you want to join alpha in rather than picking holes in ours just because you can't afford it.
I am working part time on just above minimum wage and I am fed up with being told I am RICH just because i chose to give up a lot of other things to back Elite.
Reading between the lines in the alpha forum, the dev team seem to have underestimated the volume of useful feedback they would receive. Perhaps a more logical conclusion is that their website communicated a message that turned out to be wrong, and will need to update the site when they get back after Christmas
What evidence do you have that it would be more suitable with different arrangements?
Neither of us have any hard evidence, however the number of videos and the amount of chatter suggests to me that people are serious about it, which is the most you can ask of "civilian" testers.
No, the logical conclusion is that Frontier is still willing to take £200 in return for an alpha slot/early access. We know nothing about how they feel the alpha is going.
Vintager, I live in similar country and I don't request FD to lower alpha cost because of that. Copy of the game and expansion pass is entirely accessible to me but I went further and put 80 pounds in ED basket just because I believe in game.
Also, what's this obsession with alpha? Beta will come soon enough. Relax
You're making a very big and very wrong assumption Vinatger. By fronting up £200 you are not buying access to a fully working and finished game ahead of the rest of the community nor are you buying extra priviledges in addition to those the rest of the community will get (outside of those given to early backers through the Kickstarter, etc).
You're proving to FD that you have the necessary desire and dedication to help them make sure that what they are building will work as they intend it to and that it will be an enjoyable experience to play. The suitability criteria you bandy around is if you're prepared to put £200 of your own money into the pot then you are prepared to spend the time and effort required to test everything that FD put in front of you and more importantly, tell them what works, what doesn't and whether you enjoy it or not: regardless of how useful that feedback is.
The suitability criteria at this stage is if you are not prepared to pay that amount of money, what feedback you're likely to give them is, at best, irrelevant at this stage of game production as you have neither the desire nor the dedication to make things better. Just the desire to have bragging rights of early access and nothing but negitivity rather than effective & constructive criticism.
I don't like the whole money for perks thing.
As another poster has said the kickstarter phase is over now and Frontier have said they have enough funding to develop the game for retail release.
lets not go down the Star Citizen route with more and bigger marketing and more and more perks for sale, after all it's starting to look like the massive hype that strategy has generated is beginning to backfire.
Already there is disquiet after they didn't dare release the alpha on time. Why not you ask, it's an alpha isn't it supposed to be buggy ? i believe one of the main reasons was they couldn't release a buggy alpha because expectations have been massively hyped up by their marketing strategy based around money generation through perks.
People's expectations are so high now the game is almost certainly going to disappoint.
And lastly i believe my route to elite will be far more rewarding and prestigious than if i had bought my way there through in game perks, illustrated by this example:
when you see a ship with a gold elite badge on it you will know that the commander is a founding member of elite and has paid for the right to wear that badge, mind you you might feel confident in taking a shot at him as he might not be a very good pilot. however if you see a ship with a sliver elite badge you will know that the commander piloting that ship has earned that badge through combat. are you going to take a shot at him ?
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Definitely not.
My kickstarter projects are international although truthfully its not a criteria I especially researched.
Ultimately if you don't value the alpha then it is your choice not to take Frontier up on it you have previously indicated that the kind of sums involved weren't a problem.
However just because you don't value the alpha I'm not sure that Frontiers attitude can be classed as appalling. Neither do I think someone should be classed as Rich simply because they consider the alpha good value.
There are those out there who intrinsically value access to the early alpha on an equivalent or higher basis than a new ship or other reward, the fact that your not one of them is a simple difference of opinion. I'm of the opinion there are advantages to this kind of focus that we may only see later. In the case of SC they turned into an engineering design shop for a while , not really surprising they started doing adverts which were classier than BMW. They have obviously had some nasty surprises with the ability of the engine to cope with their designs. They are a bright bunch I am sure they will work it out.
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Also I strongly disagree that non-alpha backers can't contribute in alpha testing. We have already seen several discussions on general and game features about several aspects of combat. It's all good and people see what to expect, how things work, and what could require changes or tweaks. Also you can visit streamers (I suggest Kerrash Landing) to ask them to perform several things, or reproduce bug you saw while watching videos.
Let's keep this community feeling going. Beta will start very soon and many more people will join. After second beta and then will be close to complete thing
Let's keep this community feeling going. Beta will start very soon and many more people will join. After second beta and then will be close to complete thing