no we did not get all the free skins. we got access to the Cobra IV... a meh... whatever ship. and not sure but i htink we got the black friday paint job. that was it
"Beyond" free for Horizon owners - LEP musings
- Thread starter Astral Crawler
- Start date
- Status
no we did not get all the free skins. we got access to the Cobra IV... a meh... whatever ship. and not sure but i htink we got the black friday paint job. that was it
Ah, the Cobra IV, a pre-order punishment
Independent expansions would seem to be a greater challenge, but still possible. I've seen it done quite well by other developers.
As a non-LEP owner, personally I'm not going to be getting frustrated even by a cumulative design, when feature rich paid expansions are offered. And I say this because the "Beyond" presentation didn't appear to be, or even pretend to be, a new expansion (speaking on my own opinion). I'm already $100 in for Elite and Horizons, not including decoration frivolity purchases. Putting another $100 into paid expansions in the next 3 years will not bother me, if the development and gameplay experiences are still what I'm enjoying.
And with regard to the terminology of "Seasons" for expansions... This is all just my own thinking, and maybe completely off the mark... Looking back at Horizons, I can't help but think that the original development "plan" Frontier sold was something that in actuality presented them with more fits than expected. I'm looking at things like Guardians and Multi-crew, with networking and technical stuff that appears to still be worked on. Some maybe even can be traced back to Wings, with similar issues.
But the thing was, Frontier put themselves on the hot seat when they sold those promises in the Horizons product. The features had to be delivered, as best as possible, and then continue to be worked out as necessary.
I have had to wonder whether the end of "Seasons" may mean a reversal of the content release strategy. Instead of buying a promised set of interesting features for "3.0", I wonder whether we'll be presented with a mostly feature-complete "3.0" paid expansion, that delivers what it says, immediately on day one, with few dangling promises. Any extra features that come along during the "3.0" product cycle would be a bonus, as Frontier is able to complete them to their satisfaction, without those features ever being a mandatory focus of development and release.
As I said, I may be way off track with this thinking. But the background time during "Beyond" heading toward the "3.0" to follow would seem a nice window of development time for that kind of concept.
Last edited:
I remember a vid or livestream where one of the devs said they would prefer to avoid 'branching', I assumed at the time this kind of scenario was what they were referring to.
I would like to remind that people begged to offer LEP for sale after FD closed that feature off. I guess they wanted to avoid discussions like this.
To give some feel...they netted some 200k - 400k with LEP. Comparing to 40m they have netted with game together now.
If you feel you need try to refund - do that. Playing Horizons might be seen as voiding that refund though (my guess).
To give some feel...they netted some 200k - 400k with LEP. Comparing to 40m they have netted with game together now.
If you feel you need try to refund - do that. Playing Horizons might be seen as voiding that refund though (my guess).
LEP buyers need to get some sort of fair compensation whether it be a refund or store credit - something. Those that paid extra for the pass have not received their goods as advertised at the time of sale which was an expansion per year as you have described. They need to release one more "free" paid expansion to at least allow LEP buyers to break even.
But for 2018 there's certainly not enough material being released to justify a price so it's no wonder FDev are giving these updates out at no charge. And to many, including myself, Horizon's 2.x didn't offer enough value considering what was paid so the additional updates help. Only concern now is that since it is free then there's no real pressure to release on time or at all for that matter. So we may see timelines shift to the right as we saw with 2.x. And this may become what remains of the fictitious 10-year plan!
You are completely wrong, they never said there will be a paid expansion every year.
Not exactly, but when explaining the seasons concept so that people had some idea what they were getting for horizons, they said a season would be about 1 year. They never ever said (to my knowledge) how many years there would be. People have taken a 10y number from somewhere, but I suspect even if true, this would be from the very start of the ed project, not from release date.
I would really like some more people to have a look at the yearly financial statements from FD, it might stop them from making ridiculous statements about the financial state and future of the game. I did, and the way they recognise the income from LEP, it would appear that there was 5 or 6 years left in the project from the release of horizons. There may be more after that, but it would rely on the release of further paid modules or the good will of shareholders (of which there is none)
Rafe Zetter
Banned
No they didn't say they were stopping development after 2018 - but they gave ZERO INFO in the roadmap PAST 2018 which to many is just as bad.
Ok here's a lesson in human nature and economics:
- scenario 1 - FDev statement "we will stop development after 2018"
result: Dev suicide. player numbers fall off a cliff almost immediately, sales in the store almost completely shut down - ED support is closed. FDev the company suffers major losses on the stockmarket; boardmembers and shareholders frantically sell their shares before they are devalued completely, Tencent sue the ever loving crap out of Frontier for misleading them into investing in a company with a successful flagship product that they have now decided to pull the plug on only a few months later and at least 7 years early (according to some dev logs). Frontier the company folds with massive debts and DB is professionally and financially ruined. fanbois keep drinking the coolade, and keep playing for as long as the games system allows in ever dwindling numbers until just Sleutlebos is left, wandering the galaxy alone forlornly typing in the chat channels "helloooo? is anybody there? someone, please talk to me..."
So no, they wouldn't release such a press statement as you decribe Eagleboy.. despite how questionably inept FDev might be at certain other things.
- Scenario 2 - FDev statement "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." (as stated by mad mike)
result - current playerbase is reassured, new player numbers either remain the same or continue to grow - sales of store items continue, fanbois keep drinking the coolade, things continue with a renewed sense of optimism and some previous dissenters might even become borderline fans. FDev might even decide to re-open the LTP scheme and make a few sales.
This is what I would have done.
- CURRENT SCENARIO - "FDev radio silence, as usual"
result: current playerbase splits into several sections some of whom have paid 4x the price of others and are left wondering if they will receive worthwhile value content under their LTP that EVERYONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR, or should they petition for some sort of partial refund or store credit. Fanbois keep drinking the coolade, and telling everyone "There there it's all going to be ok" while in reality have no actual clue or better information than anyone else. Players who were already borderline regarding several things they didn't like about the game finally jump ship, and the rest of us are left just scratching our heads and saying..."ok, what now?"
So Eagleboy, no game Dev ever said they were going to stop development, until very close to when they decide to pull the plug - Star wars galaxies iirc didn't tell the playersbase until 3 months before servers were shut off for good, the result was player numbers declined drastically overnight, and those were the dedicated fanbois who had already kept that particular dead horse going LONG after it should have. The only people left were the usual ghouls who wanted to be there at the very end.
FDev's marketing group are like the worst in gaming history ever, they are sitting on the only really viable space sim around at the moment, with SC looming but with several years worth of dev time ahead, and they are not capitalising or even solidifying thier position AT ALL.
BTW Eagleboy - how's the petition to FDev going for the linux port - heard anything about that eh, still hopefull you'll get it? *s*.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
The whole wording of the LTP and the KS backer level that includes it, had wording that implies expansions with paid for content would be on a regular basis. Once every THREE YEARS isn't regular. Especially if you buy into the whole Ten year plan. It's taken 3 years for 1 paid for content expansion, the next year will be core improvements with probably little actual content of a quality that could be deemed "paid for worthy"** so that's now FOUR YEARS out of TEN with just ONE PAID FOR
expansion.
Under those terms the LTP value for money is looking very very shakey - hence the thread.
** unless they introduce some parts under microtrans - which would be interesting to see how the players react to that.
We'll see about that.
![[SI] Bobdelion](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/35/35943.jpg?1553527109){kind=avatar}
Value is such a subjective thing. My local chippy keeps increasing the amount of chips they put in a portion, but I'm hard pushed to say they are better value when it always gets to the point where we can't eat any more and the rest just ends up in the bin. I bought into the lifetime pass at premium beta and personally think I've gotten more than the value of that ticket from the last few years I've been playing E: D. In the past I've bought into other games at a similar level that have since gone free-to-play. This is far from that situation and I feel more of a good will gesture to the player base. I also suspect that they are seeing a health return from store items making this a canny move on their part.
Well stated reply. FDev should really come clean and consider refunds or some sort of comp - at least make the offer to those from KS that basically helped get them to where they are today. They can afford to do this now thanks to many of them. (Comment on SC: they are giving refunds no questions asked. I know as I got mine in less than 2 weeks.)
Last edited:
SC is not released yet. Giving you a refund for ED which you have played for 3 years is something completely different.
![BigBANGtheory [VR]](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/71/71385.jpg?1644873788){kind=avatar}
bunch of lepers if you ask me
I bought the game on release so I can't offer much insight into the beta package but The difference in cost between the Horizons season and the LEP is ostensibly to cover product not yet delivered. Hence the comparison to SC.
For clarity I'm not looking for a refund, I just want to know what the plan is. This is a reasonable request.
The ten year thing is from DB. He said they had long term plans and would love to keep going, even ten years if possible.
- Status