"Beyond" free for Horizon owners - LEP musings

[-VR- Max Factor]

I already covered this. Look I am not salty about hoizons getting a 3rd year extension. I AM worried about what it means for long term development.

My statement was not rocket science to figure out tho. Horizons dlc was intimated at being a year, it is now going g to be 3 years but for that some paid £30 and some paid £120. It's fab that many are patient to wait and still not worried about their £120. (And despite how it may seem I am not mad either) I am worried FD next step may be refunds on the LTP . IF that happens imo it will be very worrying.... But I CAN see why some may want a refund. Take fanboy hat off a sec (no insult intended i am one too) and imagine if EA pulled this length without dlc for season pass users with a bf game and what response would be

I personally all would wait a year first before worrying. To me it looks like they are getting the planet tech ready for an expansion on landable planets. I am hoping that more planets will be a thing in a year's time, and I suspect we will have to pay too. Except for LEP owners.

 

[spriggan72]

I'm also an Horizon LEPer and I feel I thrown the difference from the base horizon price out of the window (100€ more or less)
I also wander who's going to pay the athmosferic landing or the legs if ED is not supposed to get new money in 2018... i seriously dobt someone can jump into ED now: the game is basically the same since 2 years and anyone interested should have already bought it ...

I feel we're slowly stoping on a dead rail and mr braben used the money I wanted to invest in ED (pc version) to develop eveithing but this (console version, jurassic world...)
as for SC lesson is: if you don't like to feel screwed don' t pay your money for future (unclearly described) stuff....

 

[Patrick_68000]

Jesus christ... how many hours have you played and had fun, and how much did you pay for it? Then compare that to movie tickets...

With this kind of reasoning, I wonder why we do not run with a Ferrari. Tomorrow I go to the dealer to buy a Ferrari knowing that I will ride with for 40 years ...

 

[Patrick_68000]

Anything is speculation. But down to business basics: frontier cannot go on giving away content. They will at some point have to charge for DLC. I'm guessing that is probably after 3304. A couple of people are speculating / knowledge that 3304 may indeed have paid content over the free stuff.

Do not forget that the owners of LEP are a minority (a few thousand of people on 2.7 million copies). In addition, a commitment is a commitment

 

[Patrick_68000]

Ok there will "Beyond" free. I hope that one day we will go beyond the Horizons, because by definition, the Horizon is unattainable

 

[Patrick_68000]

I already covered this. Look I am not salty about hoizons getting a 3rd year extension. I AM worried about what it means for long term development.

My statement was not rocket science to figure out tho. Horizons dlc was intimated at being a year, it is now going g to be 3 years but for that some paid £30 and some paid £120. It's fab that many are patient to wait and still not worried about their £120. (And despite how it may seem I am not mad either) I am worried FD next step may be refunds on the LTP . IF that happens imo it will be very worrying.... But I CAN see why some may want a refund. Take fanboy hat off a sec (no insult intended i am one too) and imagine if EA pulled this length without dlc for season pass users with a bf game and what response would be

I agree. Frontier must officially confirm that there will be major expansions such as planetary landings (for eg)

 

[Patrick_68000]

I feel we're slowly stoping on a dead rail and mr braben used the money I wanted to invest in ED (pc version) to develop eveithing but this (console version, jurassic world...)

The doubt invades me

 

[Watcher]

I have the LEP and I've paid more for ED than any other game, can't say I'm sorry though.

Yes, I could probably have achieved the same thing for less but I've had a lot of hours out of it, been glad to support FD from early on & look forward to whatever is to come.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I agree. Frontier must officially confirm that there will be major expansions such as planetary landings (for eg)

Exactly this is my point. FD should have had announcer ready for the forum's at least saying along the lines of "and rest assured LTP owners work is still ongoing with legs, atmosphere planets, ship boarding etc... The future is bright and the LTP is still the best place to be for the future content. ESP as FD surly must have known the LTPer folk are far more likely to be those at the likes of the fan convention

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Exactly this is my point. FD should have had announcer ready for the forum's at least saying along the lines of "and rest assured LTP owners work is still ongoing with legs, atmosphere planets, ship boarding etc... The future is bright and the LTP is still the best place to be for the future content. ESP as FD surly must have known the LTPer folk are far more likely to be those at the likes of the fan convention

Mad Mike, they have been saying they will develop new features again and again.

Did you hear them saying "we will stop developing game after 2018"? I didn't

 

[two quiet suns]

This is utter nonsense. Have you all got nothing better to do? Complaining about nothing.

 

[Cmdr Andrew Johnson]

I paid £100 as a premium beta backer, am I happy? Yes.
Add in a Hotas Joystick, new pc and a rift all to play ED - am I still happy? Yes.
I play no other games as I don’t have the time but I have loved Elite since 1984 and still love it today.
Delighted to see things be fleshed out more next year and dont care that it is free to Horizon owners. Heck I may even venture into open and join a squadron just to say hello.

 

[spriggan72]

I guess that if even just a person is working on legs or planets, they would be able to show at least a concept of that feature... frontier expo is the kind of event where you can show future thing even is just at a conceptual state...

 

[ianbillmorris]

My theory is that they are trying to go Free To Play, financially that worked well for Star Trek Online, but in my view, it was at the expense of game play. (everything good in STO is locked behind gambling lockboxes). If they do go that route, they can reward players with LTP accounts in a similar way to STO, basically "Lifers" in that game get a stipend of store points each month, it actually worked out to be a good deal for them.

I hope they don't go F2P I much prefer the Guild Wars 1 model of buying expansions. However they could set their expansions on different continents to split the content so it made it easy.

 

[bitstorm]

I'm trying to remember fully (I had to go out immediately as the Elite segment of the show ended)... Is Frontier officially calling this next year of updates "3.0"? I saw them call it "Beyond", but wasn't sure if this is actually presented as a new "expansion" or not.

The 3.0 naming was notable by it's absence.

 

[babelfisch]

I know it is very popular that Frontier is talking about moving away from the Season pass payment upgrade thing and yes "core game" upgrades should be part of the main game -- much of the newly announced stuff will be "free" for Horizons owners... but um... yeah... Some assurance or explanation from Frontier to those people [like me] who bought that damn "Lifetime pass" for a lot more money when I got Horizons, and now everything is going to be "free" for anyone who paid less than me and just bought horizons only? That.. kinda feels like I should get a refund or at least some assurance or explanation how I paid 3 times what i needed to pay to get Horizons. I am a huge fan and love all the stuff they are adding.. but... come on guys you sold us something and then changed the rules of the deal?

Horizons an Beyond is not the end of the lifetime of Elite Dangerous. There will be more paid updates.

I think the point is that we don't know, and would like to be reassured. The company seems to be in rude health, I'm not concerned they will go bust or do a runner, but I am concerned that from the title 'and Beyond', it appears right now that there will be no further development that will make buying the LEP seem like a good idea.

How exactly do you come to that conclusion?!

 

[mistohise]

This is utter nonsense. Have you all got nothing better to do? Complaining about nothing.

Indeed.

Or, even, complaining because, after buying a lifetime pass, the things announced for next "season" weren't the desired things.

This talk of refunds is absurd, and I hope that refunds are never offered for the pass. (Yes, I own the pass myself). When the pass was offered, "the future" was speculative. It still is.

 

[bitstorm]

I think for me I'd like them to do something on the multiple CMDR front for LEP owners.

Linking cosmetics across multiple accounts would be great.

I have bought many cosmetics for my main, but I won't buy any for my alts because it really adds up.

It would be great it Frontier added the notion of "free expansions" into "auto-expanding" my purchased cosmetics into my other accounts.

Maybe give lepers the ability to link say up to 4 accounts and let them have a shared cosmetic pool?

I do not think this should be a large amount of work, the leper list isn't going to change :

1) Zac contacts lepers and collates the CMDR list
2) Dav Stott adds a nightly db job that copies the cosmetic data to the other nominated accounts. Easy.

That alone would be justification enough I think for any LEP purchase, and there's probably an argument that it encourages LEP owners to make cosmetic purchases too. Essentially it acts as a bit of a "value multiplier" for multi-CMDR lepers.

 

[Dakron Nova]

I havent read the whole thread but I can imagine how salty it is in parts.

My advice for LEP owners is that FD obviously have some big ticket stuff coming for 2019-2020 and have the money to keep this development project going until at least then. 2018 is a consolidation and almost an admittance that they got some things wrong which should be in the core game, therefore as its core game we are going to get it Free. But for those big expansions for 2019-2020 I think you are sitting securely.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Indeed.

Or, even, complaining because, after buying a lifetime pass, the things announced for next "season" weren't the desired things.

This talk of refunds is absurd, and I hope that refunds are never offered for the pass. (Yes, I own the pass myself). When the pass was offered, "the future" was speculative. It still is.

For the record I DONT want refunds offered either.