Steam reviews

[Garbarrage]

And WHEN it is...i'll buy it fer a tenner just like ED, and I won't complain about it at all, just like i'm chuffed i got ED for a tenner even though it's still full of dodgy missions, cheating / cheap ai tactics etc, etc, but in my opinion , as it stands Horizons is no-where near a full priced game, just my opinion of course.

You are misunderstanding the pricing structure. The money that people paid last year funded this year's development. Without that investment, planetary landings wouldn't have happened. If everyone did as you plan on doing, there would be no game.

Sure, you're paying up front for content, but this is a niche game. If FD were to follow the pricing model of every other game out there, the game would be completely different.

If you're happy to be behind the curve, and outside the bulk of the community driven content, for the sake of ~€23, then fine. If you think €37.50 isn't worth 12 months of a Dev team putting their heart and soul into a game isn't value for money, I'd like to see what you do consider value for money.

 

[robbyp]

If you're happy to be behind the curve, and outside the bulk of the community driven content, for the sake of ~€23, then fine. If you think €37.50 isn't worth 12 months of a Dev team putting their heart and soul into a game isn't value for money, I'd like to see what you do consider value for money.

Hear hear! Well done for this comment.

 

[Lheim]

Sure, you're paying up front for content, but this is a niche game. If FD were to follow the pricing model of every other game out there, the game would be completely different.

Surely you can see how people might have a problem with paying up front for content. Surely you can.

Even with patches to come, Horizons ought to be value out of the box.

The "niche game" excuse is not saleable in general on principle.

 

[PsyaNyde]

I'm always happy to pay for work done IF it's up to standard, NEVER pay fully upfront when the builder has only laid 2 bricks but promised to build a mansion .

 

[Garbarrage]

Surely you can see how people might have a problem with paying up front for content. Surely you can.

Even with patches to come, Horizons ought to be value out of the box.

The "niche game" excuse is not saleable in general on principle.

If this was any other company, and any other game, and I couldn't see the company spending money on development, then sure.

The fact is, that it's obvious that they spend the money on development. They're very engaged in the community. It's clear as day that they care about the game, and I'm sure 10p% certain that profit isn't their main motivation. The Devs literally gush about their work when asked about it. They're making the game they always wanted to make, and I want to see where they go with it.

In 10 years this game will be truly incredible. It's already better than anything else available imo. But it won't happen without support.

If you buy anything from EA, you'll pay through the nose. The F2P P2W games? Forget about it. I buy into this model because I'm sick to death of actual rip off artists.

€3.30/month is incredible value. Well worth paying for up front. If EVE offered a similar price if you paid 12 months up front, nobody would bat an eyelid, and Eve is like watching paint dry.

 

[h347h]

I feel like the steam reviews of horizon are misleading. As it stand the positive user reviews are at 72%, yet if you look at all the reviews on the game front page, they're all negative.these review are from what I can see people who
a. Want something for free
b. People moaning about content. (Personally I understand this. Elite is full of stuff to do. You just have to go looking for it. Have goals for the play session. Anyway I'm getting side tracked)
c. Having to wait for content.
One of the front page reviews is from a guy who has play 0.9hrs.
Firstly I don't understand the hate elite is getting and secondly steam needs to show positives as well a negative. As it stands someone thinking about buying might be put off.

This is what happens when you try and push a niche genre game to a wider market.

 

[Slack]

I play Elite a lot and love this game, but even I havent bought Horizons. And its not that i dont have $60, but something in me wont let me pay that much for a "patch/update" which should have been $20 for existing Elite owners. I mean I just paid $70 for Elite less than a year ago, now I have to pay another $60 to land on a moon? I'm not surprised they are getting negative reviews, half of them are about the price.

Since Horizons came out I spent the $60 on a combination of other games and am glad I did.

 

[Kirth]

I play Elite a lot and love this game, but even I havent bought Horizons. And its not that i dont have $60, but something in me wont let me pay that much for a "patch/update" which should have been $20 for existing Elite owners. I mean I just paid $70 for Elite less than a year ago, now I have to pay another $60 to land on a moon? I'm not surprised they are getting negative reviews, half of them are about the price.

Since Horizons came out I spent the $60 on a combination of other games and am glad I did.

so you made an informed decision based on research of the content vs what you were prepared to pay. You would have no reason to make a negative review.

steam reviews however, are by those who did not do the research you did and instead are blaming the price, rather than taking responsibility on their lack of research and decision making that you made.

its unclear why you would understand the negative reviews then.

 

[Straker]

Steam reviews might simply be a very good outlet for those people who aren't interested in stepping back, looking at the big picture, and taking a balaced perspective. The human brain is more like a laser scanning system and is incapable of processing multiple simu!taneous inputs to process a conscious idea and express it in such a way that represents and reflects the complexities of the real-world.

One very important aspect that I think a great deal of reviewers are missing is the basic fact that Frontier's fundamental development model is similar to a perpetual Kickstarter crowd-sourced project. They are making the game that they want, with feedback from the community. We simply back them with our money up front and take the risk that they will make the game that we also want. If more people hnderstood this then it would help tremendously. For me personally, the risk has mostly paid off.

 

[PsyaNyde]

Steam reviews might simply be a very good outlet for those people who aren't interested in stepping back, looking at the big picture, and taking a balaced perspective. The human brain is more like a laser scanning system and is incapable of processing multiple simu!taneous inputs to process a conscious idea and express it in such a way that represents and reflects the complexities of the real-world.

One very important aspect that I think a great deal of reviewers are missing is the basic fact that Frontier's fundamental development model is similar to a perpetual Kickstarter crowd-sourced project. They are making the game that they want, with feedback from the community. We simply back them with our money up front and take the risk that they will make the game that we also want. If more people hnderstood this then it would help tremendously. For me personally, the risk has mostly paid off.

IF they are truly making a game with , as you say feedback from the community, then why havent the missions been fixed / improved, why is there still no bookmark facility? why are there no proper security forces in place, why....why... why, stuff asked for by vast numbers of the community, simply..ignored.

 

[Lheim]

In 10 years this game will be truly incredible. It's already better than anything else available imo. But it won't happen without support.

Again, the argument about paying now for future value.

It's ok for kickstarter, but I don't believe it's tenable long term for a released game.

I want people to be saying ED is an amazing purchase now, not in the nebulous future. That's the way a commercial product thrives.

 

[GeneralIdea1964]

I feel like the steam reviews of horizon are misleading. As it stand the positive user reviews are at 72%, yet if you look at all the reviews on the game front page, they're all negative.these review are from what I can see people who
a. Want something for free
b. People moaning about content. (Personally I understand this. Elite is full of stuff to do. You just have to go looking for it. Have goals for the play session. Anyway I'm getting side tracked)
c. Having to wait for content.
One of the front page reviews is from a guy who has play 0.9hrs.
Firstly I don't understand the hate elite is getting and secondly steam needs to show positives as well a negative. As it stands someone thinking about buying might be put off.

To be fair if you read reviews and comments about ED in this forum you get a lot of negatives most of the time ... people complaining about something or other generally!
Doesn't stop us playing. Reviews are only one persons viewpoint.
It has to be said that I did buy myself a second commander for the £10. and I'm discovering (again?) how hard it is to get going.
For the new modern younger(?) players who want to get straight into killing things with the big guns, this is much too slow.
All I can say is GOOD games needing a bit of thought and planning where you don't get the 1 million cr immediately and therefore can't rank your ship up to mega without some effort is good.

 

[GeneralIdea1964]

IF they are truly making a game with , as you say feedback from the community, then why havent the missions been fixed / improved, why is there still no bookmark facility? why are there no proper security forces in place, why....why... why, stuff asked for by vast numbers of the community, simply..ignored.

They do get fixed. It's often slow and if not done with care can massively affect balances of one thing against another.
I cite the 10cr repair bug. This has now been fixed with the release of horizons. (still has a sight gremlin, but the 'in your face' fault has been fixed)
BUT this did not actually affect gameplay one iota!!
Some weapons have been nerfed which I think seem to have been for the better and some are a lot more deadly ( rail guns )
The detuning of shield cell banks and the like makes for better ship-to-ship fighting dynamics.
NPC intelligence has changed. I think it is less effective now than earlier, but you can still go looking for trouble and find it!
Faults don't get fixed immediately and some I think are 'placeholders' for further development so seem a bit weak or pointless.
.
If you want something changing, either post a bug report or make a suggestion here on forums and see how many people support your ideas.
BUT .. DO TRY to be constructive. You will get much better results with a well argued suggestion than a general whine about how bad 'such and such' is!

cheers
and have a great new year.

 

[Alric]

Again, the argument about paying now for future value.

It's ok for kickstarter, but I don't believe it's tenable long term for a released game.

I want people to be saying ED is an amazing purchase now, not in the nebulous future. That's the way a commercial product thrives.

It's worth the money now, and it also has the potential to get better over time.
If you buy the game right now you get everything including Horizons for £40 - a normal price for a release game.
If you have never played the game before - never learned to fly the ships, never experienced the space combat, never seen the sights or tried different ships and load outs, never investigated the ring systems or explored planet surfaces, etc. etc. the there is plenty of hours play there to justify the price tag.

If you've already seen everything to the point where you see it's just doing it all over and over again, then you've either had your money's worth already, or you just don't like this sort of game very much.

There are tons of things I think need improving with this game, tons needs to be added to keep me playing for 10 years. But I don't expect 10 years entertainment for £40. Literally no game has ever come anywhere near that. There are many AAA games that I have bought, and played for less time than I've already sunk in to Elite - and I have played Elite sparingly.

So yeah it's quite right to say this game has a ton of future potential, and there are massive improvements that could be made. But some people go way beyond that and act like there isn't a game there at all and they haven't got anything worthwhile for their money.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

side note:

has anyone noticed that horizons is listed as "early access" on steam?
sound wrong at first, but then... the early access phase will end in about 11 months from now, whith season 3 -> and thats what you are buying.

 

[Webferret]

Steam reviews are a joke regardless, Most have from 1 - 10 hours of game play. Honestly who can review any game in that time. There should be a time limit before a review can be posted. Many Steam gamer's require ! and ? to follow in games to feel "Leet" and with Elite, this they don't have, so negative review immediately for them, to hard to use their own brain to play.

When ever checking a game on Steam via reviews I disregard all reviews with 20 or less hours played, cause most are negative and just wannabe trolling of the game.

<There are exceptions to the above though at times, certain games are released that just don't work from get go and they deserve the negative feedback, I am sure many were around for X-Rebirth's launch...........Alas I was!>

 

[Vargur]

Those negative reviews on the first page are making people think twice about buying the game.
This will lead them to do some more research before buying the game which should make it so that less people who wouldn't be interested in the game buy it, and thus should lead to more people reviewing it positively.
The fact that ratings are still dropping means that even with those negative reviews and with (possible) research plenty of people are still dissatisfied with what they have purchased.
Eventually things should stabilize and maybe even go up a little, but at what point that is remains to be seen.

And tbh FDev just isn't helping in all of this.
Like with the first release they once again put out a game trailer that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself.
Use the trailer to show people what product they buy, not to mislead them into thinking they are buying something else.

 

[Garbarrage]

Again, the argument about paying now for future value.

It's ok for kickstarter, but I don't believe it's tenable long term for a released game.

I want people to be saying ED is an amazing purchase now, not in the nebulous future. That's the way a commercial product thrives.

That's the way a money grab thrives. The way a game that is more concerned with the big picture thrives, is by finding it's niche target audience and cultivating them into a niche group of solid supporters. If that's not you, and you'd rather throw AAA prices at 20hrs of story mode, or P2W, then fair enough, it's obviously not for you. But if you'd rather see a game made, that for once is simply designed around creating something spectacular, for its own sake, then you'll get on board. If not, it's no big loss. There are clearly more people who appreciate the project than those who don't. The sooner FD shed the dead weight the better.

 

[JeffRyan]

Wow, I came back expecting to be hammered for my post (which was a bit of a temper tantrum, being tired of seeing this come up again and again and again, I apologise) but glad to see many felt the same way.

 

[no namn]

I play Elite a lot and love this game, but even I havent bought Horizons. And its not that i dont have $60, but something in me wont let me pay that much for a "patch/update" which should have been $20 for existing Elite owners. I mean I just paid $70 for Elite less than a year ago, now I have to pay another $60 to land on a moon? I'm not surprised they are getting negative reviews, half of them are about the price.

Since Horizons came out I spent the $60 on a combination of other games and am glad I did.

you dont HAVE to pay 60 to "land on a moon"..!!
you can wait a year...or two... or three...! as i understood it u can then buy the previuos season at a (much) discounted price and get all previous seasons content for price of less than one! but u will miss out of playing during the games evolving phase during that time... (no stop that silly thought of game ever being "finished", hopefully it will keep evolving for as long as its still live!!)

i have bought beta + lifetime and i have a VERY restricted budget and i STILL dont cry about this games costs for new players or whatever vs me and others who payed more, its stupid..! unless someone pointed a gun at ur head when u made the purchase u can only blame urself really for what u bought. if u choose to wait with purchase, well.. then u get to save money, good for you...
i wish more price complainers understood this before they clicked "checkout" that its really a yearly subscription.. nothing new really in the online world (but we get to play it after that payed for year is over.. how great aint that!!!! much unlike most other games with subcriptions that i know of....)

and i doubt many of the steam reviewers even mention any of this...