Sooo... What happens when development stops?

Eventually Frontier is going to tell us this is the end of the line for new expansions and features. Many of us will not be pleased to see that day. What would you guys think if Frontier gave us the opportunity to crowdfund continued development when that day comes instead of them just shelving ED entirely, similar but not parallel to what Star Citizen is doing by selling ships.
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Different rewards would be needed, of course. Buying ships in ED means nothing (well, it means nothing in SC too but lets not get into that...) but looking beyond that I think it'd be neat for Frontier to set hard goals with reasonable times for delivery for funding things like adding more content, more ships, or upgrading the game in a big way. Once those goals are met, the feature immediately goes into production. As examples:
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They produce some concept art for a new ship and put it up, then say it'll cost $65,000 to make the new ship and put it in game. Players donate $65,000 and a couple months later ED has a new ship. No stretch goals, no funny math of we're asking for 65 but really need 90, just we need 65k, when we have 65k, donations stop and we get to work.
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ED's getting old, it'd be nice to bring it's visual quality up to date $150,000 will give us the dev time to put some polish on everything, add details where details are needed, etc... If funding for this project happens quickly enough we'll throw up another project for converting the game over to DX12 in the process and adding those features, etc...
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You people haven't shut up about the bobble heads for 4 years, and we're still not giving them back, however for $35,000 we'll make a Thargoid plushy that flies around unrestrained in the cockpit, with full physics effects. Take it or leave it.
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etc... FD have the reins right now and they're working hard to develop the game they set out to and that's all well and good, but when they say they've done what they set out to I think this would be a great way for the community to shape the game into what they want, and get many more years of satisfaction out of it.
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What say you?

Edit: Are polls broken/disabled or did my dunce cap fall down over my eyes? I can't find the option anywhere?
 
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I think Frontier has plans to support Elite for quite a while, perhaps years if not more. Speculating about when development stops is a bit premature in my opinion.
 
I think Frontier has plans to support Elite for quite a while, perhaps years if not more. Speculating about when development stops is a bit premature in my opinion.

I think it's a good idea for them to hammer out that financial model now instead of later. 3 or 4 years will be plenty of time for them to get a good figure on development costs for all kinds of things, and lead to better customer satisfaction than we've had so far.
 
FD is nowhere near MWO-levels of fail, and even that multi-stage trainwreck is still somehow alive. Not really ready to figure out how to embalm the corpse just yet.
 
When the game hits end of life and they shut down the galaxy servers, I hope they'll just turn it over to the modding community and let them have their way with it. A few months later we should have the best star trek game.
 
I think Frontier has plans to support Elite for quite a while, perhaps years if not more. Speculating about when development stops is a bit premature in my opinion.

Agreed, I'm sure I saw something about 10 years +. If not there could always be the sequal Elite:Deadly (TM) :D

Personally I'll pay for good dlc and expansions but not inerested in crowdfunding.
 
They'll never crowdfund again. They burnt that bridge already. If they don't already know it they will if they ever take anything to kickstarter. Far far too many shenanigans have happened for that.

The only hope will be that the general resurgence of these types of games will mean publishers start getting interested again and one of them pays for a sequel.

Considering FD's handling of the entire process I actually think publishers would be a good thing and that's messed up! :)
 
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They'll never crowdfund again. They burnt that bridge already. If they don't already know it they will if they ever take anything to kickstarter. Far far too many shenanigans have happened for that.

The only hope will be that the general resurgence of these types of games will mean publishers start getting interested again and one of them pays for a sequel.

Considering FD's handling of the entire process I actually think publishers would be a good thing and that's messed up! :)

FD is a publisher, and if you want to see just how well publishers contribute to the process take a look at Batman: Arkham Knight.
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Never mentioned anything about Kickstarter, and I pointed a finger at Star Citizen for a reason. Only 3% of their funding came from Kickstarter. The entire point of saying that they set hard goals and clear deadlines is so that we don't end up with people confused about how the funding works, just like you did.
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In other words, fix all of the problems with the crowdfunding before doing it again.
 
FD is nowhere near MWO-levels of fail, and even that multi-stage trainwreck is still somehow alive. Not really ready to figure out how to embalm the corpse just yet.

Fellow refugee, here. When Frontier goes Kickstarter with MultiVerse Coaster, that will be The End.
 
We havn't even got plantary landings yet and your calling the end? lol Nothing lasts forever, by that time comes it will be ED-2.0 and no one will wanna play the old version, or it will just keep evolving till the end of the time and all human life is extinct. Just dont worry about it for now k?
 
I certainly wouldn't even contemplate crowd funding again and still patiently waiting for a lot of promised content (not PP or CQC).

I do however wonder if they might go down a subscription route at some point?
 
I thought Star Citizen wasn't going to be selling ships after/if it releases?

The current plan for ED as I understand it is:

* Continued expansions (this might be penciled in to appear quite frequently, I guess we'll know soon enough how far ahead they are)
* Cosmetic items (works ridiculously well for Valve, certainly seems to work nicely as an addition for Frontier)
* Continued expansion onto other platforms (all of which augment the above revenue points)

I'd still like to see how the above points pan out, they seem to be doing ok.
 
End game would be release of the server system so people could host their own servers, this will see a resurgence for a while of small servers that are spread all over the place and some will keep going for decades afterwards (look at the ones for Freelancer some are still going today). After that and if they die out then ED will drift into obscurity to be nothing more than a footnote in the history of games under its older brother Elite which will still shine then.
 
Why don't you just play the game instead of starting really uninteresting threads on the forum ?

It makes trading so much more tedious when you have to surf through such drivel
 
We havn't even got plantary landings yet and your calling the end? lol Nothing lasts forever, by that time comes it will be ED-2.0 and no one will wanna play the old version, or it will just keep evolving till the end of the time and all human life is extinct. Just dont worry about it for now k?

Because procrastinating is going to lead to great things, right? Look at how many different posts there are with different opinions on what is/should be/might happen in ED's future. No consensus or even any idea about what is happening after the final expansion drops. We've only got half a game so far and as far as we can tell when the game is finally finished it's just going to be a back burner patch it if it breaks kind of deal when the engine supports 8k resolutions?
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No, ED's roadmap needs to be defined, and has been needing definition since development started. It's ridiculous to perpetuate this problem.

I thought Star Citizen wasn't going to be selling ships after/if it releases?

The current plan for ED as I understand it is:

* Continued expansions (this might be penciled in to appear quite frequently, I guess we'll know soon enough how far ahead they are)
* Cosmetic items (works ridiculously well for Valve, certainly seems to work nicely as an addition for Frontier)
* Continued expansion onto other platforms (all of which augment the above revenue points)

I'd still like to see how the above points pan out, they seem to be doing ok.

Lol, Star Citizen continued to sell ships to the tune of another 80 million in funding, and is still selling them, expecting to pass 100 million by the end of the year. It's a circus.

3 expansions, after which we'll supposedly have all of the features promised in the fundraising. And then nothing definite announced, just "we'll continue to support it." Given the game's potential longevity I'd prefer it if they started working on the financial side of that support model now.

Why don't you just play the game instead of starting really uninteresting threads on the forum ?

It makes trading so much more tedious when you have to surf through such drivel

Trying, but with everyone trading in solo and spamming the forums I can't find enough targets.
 
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...and all of this is why the game should have featured offline, and thus mod support. With modding, a game is future-proofed; you only have to glance in Freelancer's direction to see that not only are people still playing it... they're still playing it together. And that game didn't even ship with an SDK.

But that leads to a whole, bigger debate.
 
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