Where is the paid 'content' LEP holder get for 'free'
- Thread starter DeathStroke
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You'll need to show your working out there.
Given that they've been releasing the beyond stuff on schedule (AFAIK), doesn't that mean the plan is ticking along smoothly so the paid content will be along after beyond which is meant to finish around the end of the year.
The fact this has gone on for 64 pages sadly confirms the state of the gaming industry as a whole.
Once upon a time, being ABLE to do something didn't mean you SHOULD do something - particularly as back then, morals and principles were somewhat more positive towards other people - not saying it was all rainbows and unicorns (unlike today...), but the mistreatment of customers was definitely not quite as widespread as it is today.
Unfortunately, since EA, Ubi and all the other large game publishers have shown that, in the majority of cases, screwing over the paying customer is not only possible, but very profitable, it's becoming the standard. Common sense, goodwill and ensuing the customer is happy are all just distant memories. Now it's all about legalese, weaselwords and carefully chosen wording designed to say much, but mean nothing. The concept of implied meaning has become lost to technicalities - words like 'probably', 'likely', 'forecasted', 'proposed' - all words now used to suggest one thing, but leave enough wriggle room to mean precisely nothing.
I don't really blame Frontier, and all the other companies for doing this - after all, they didn't make the world - they just live in it, same as us. However, as the continuing debacle involving a similar game set in the stars has shown, the sheer work put in by companies to hide and distribute money is incredible. Frontier have, as far as we know, never tried nor needed to do such nefarious things, however, the very fact that in the 4 years since the beginning, very little has been communicated to anyone save the taxman, tells me that they have, like so many in the past, promised much but have discovered it to be impossible to deliver. Kickstarter has been seriously abused by many people, promising the universe, but delivering Grimsby. The ideas and suchlike that were spoken about in the early days have not yet come to pass, and with only 4.5 years of PLANNED development (planned. The word is yet another attempt at weaseling out of any deadlines, set dates or suchlike. There is little chance FD will WANT to develop meaningful DLC by then, Elite Dangerous 2 could be in development by then for all we know...), I fail to see how all the talked about features could ever be developed in time...
Of course, they don't NEED to do this. They simply need to release say 2 or 3 DLC updates with a few ships, possibly an easy-to-code new feature like the gas planet mining, and say 'welp, there we go, LEP has been satisfied'. And this is exactly what I think they will do. Armchair lawyers can argue till they're blue in the face, but if you stop and think about it, even the phrasing 'Lifetime' is more weaselwording. Lifetime of what? The game? The game will run for as long as they keep the servers up. And if they keep them up for another 10 years, and release a pack of skins for £19.99 as DLC... that falls within the remit of what the LEP covers.
To conclude then... Frontier are just another example of a publisher/development house turned corporate. All their games show similar issues and flaws, but have sold enough to keep those wearing the ties happy. WB will be very pleased at the JP game, even though it is a shell of what is should have been - but it doesn't matter because the sales figures deem it a success. This is gaming now. No longer should we wait for the next game, in anticipation of new features, new ideas. Instead we get the same, safe tripe year in, year out, pretty graphics with no substance, and social media advertising campaigns with celebrities paid to endorse how real and lifelike it is.
We'll come back, 5 years from now, looking back at the days when Frontier innovated with things like free updates, no advertising within the game and not charging a license to play games. We'll consider this to be the golden age of gaming, when CoD 24 comes out and we look back and notice the maps and guns were the same. And those with LEP's will sigh, wishing they'd known that when they bought them, the promises of space legs and atmospheric planets still ringing in their ears, that 5 years from then, all they'd get was a special pack of Coke sponsored Sidewinder paintjobs.
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Yes, they released a timeline for Beyond and are sticking to it. I find that encouraging. They were, however, vague and mysterious about the paid content. It sounded like it would be released sometime this year in parallel with Beyond, not next year.
I think StuartGT clarified earlier that they said after beyond. So I'm expecting it around late 2018 or early 2019 and an announcement before then, unless something goes wrong.
Technically FD never promised to provide either light or heat for LEP owners. Please provide a citation that they ever promised that there was any responsibility do to this.
No, I honestly don't think FD will produce two or three Horizons-equivalent paid updates within the last 3 years of remaining development time between the end of 2018 and the end of 2021. If they had produced Horizons to an acceptable quality standard and released it as planned in 1 year instead of 2 years? Then I might believe that were achievable for FD.
I never said the game will "end" in 2021, only that active development of paid content that is relevant to the LEP will end at that time according to FD's Annual Report. They can of course continue to run the servers, which are a trivial expense given the game is run with P2P architecture, and they can also provide minor free updates or bug fixes. I also expect that they will continue their sale of cosmetic items and may even develop some new cosmetic content which is also not included in the LEP. I would not however expect any other development of any paid content or new seasons beyond the end of 2021 according to what FD has stated in their Annual Report.
I completely cleared my ignore list and have already had to put several people back on the list. That is based entirely on encountering semantic nonsense and trolling behavior instead of an actual discussion on the topic. I regularly clear my ignore list every so often but I doubt I am missing any "good discussion" from those individuals in the meantime.
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My point here is that we have a specific date that FD has stated they will continue active development. It's not a "10 year plan" and it certainly isn't some ridiculous "20 year plan" which is well beyond the development lifetime of any online game. It has been stated by them to be 7 years of active development. That is a very reasonable timeframe for most online games which generally see active development for anywhere between 5-10 years. It is actually exactly how long I would expect them to continue providing new seasons for Elite as I never considered claims of a "10 year plan" to be particularly realistic. As I mentioned earlier this doesn't mean the game will shut down after 7 years, especially given that the servers are a trivial expense when the game runs on P2P architecture. I also suspect that continued sales of cosmetic content will continue to be very lucrative even after FD stops developing seasons. The point here is that no one should expect active development of new game content (other than possibly cosmetics) beyond the end of 2021. That is what FD had mentioned in their Annual Report and it is what we should therefore expect from them.
I think Zac said they are working on paid for content in parallel with Beyond. He wasn't that clear about release date though. And to be fair, they shouldn't. But they should say what is coming and approximately when.
If the premium content release for 2018 that has been touted by the CM team, turns out to be more rubbish...just open the shop content to LEP and KS backers.
Might stand a chance of getting value then.
Except that based on that timetable it was very clear that 2.4 was intended for release by the end of 2016 even if that specific goal was not stated as part of that timetable. It was completely obvious to everyone that 2.4 would not take over a full year to develop between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017. You don't need to accept my explanation however since Obsidian Ant went over this in detail in his posts. Did you read them?
They would get "dollar" value but I'm not sure they would get game content value. After all the LEP sales page specifically described space legs, boarding actions and landings on inhabited planets. I would expect many of those LEP holders to be more than a little disappointed if all they end up with for their $135 difference is a bunch of ship paints and some laser colors that are technically "valued" at $1.75 for a single line of RGB code.
There's also the amusing issue that if those LEP owners have already paid for cosmetic items, they would probably expect a refund for prior cosmetic purchases if FD went that route since they shouldn't have to pay for something separately if it is included in the LEP. In many of those cases those players may have actually spent more on cosmetic items than on the LEP itself and FD might lose more money by making cosmetics "free" for LEP owners than if they simply provided LEP refunds.
In fact I've already spent $180 on cosmetic content in Elite so far and I don't even have an LEP. That is rather silly if you think about it because I've spent as much on ship paints and laser colors as LEP owners have spent on the LEP. On the other hand at least I am actually using my ship paints and laser colors on my ships right now, so in that sense I actually have some content that I can use for what I spent.
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I thought that, apparently I was wrong however I'm OK with delays so don't pay close attention to it.
Parallel development could just be them moving away from the seasons thing, as they said they would after horizons. No more buy it and they work on it later. They may be going for a fully developed package complete and ready for release, they won't know exactly when or what it'll be until it's closer to being ready. Pure speculation though.
That doesn't make any sense.
The problem is that 2.3 was not only 4-5 months late it was also delivered to a dramatically lower standard than originally planned. In the past 15 months since it was release it hasn't seen any added features or functionality and many of the most requested improvements, such as being able to drive the SRV in multicrew, have "no ETAs, no guarantees". Sandro straight-up admitted that it was a "lack of time and resources" which tells me that FD has quite simply not given Elite the minimum amount of resources it needs to deliver adequate content. I haven't seen this get any better with Thargoids (which was extremely underwhelming) or with the first 6 months of Beyond (which, with the exception of the Cheiftan and Krait, has seen changes to Engineers and C&P which have actually made the game worse).
It's not like we're getting "good" content by being "patient" with FD and accepting those lengthy delays. We're just getting poor-quality content that is being delivered late. Meanwhile, FD's stock price is doing well and they've put substantial resources into roller coasters and dinosaurs.
Does anyone honestly have any difficulty understanding why an LEP owner would be upset about this situation? I mean, even just a little? Why their knickers just might be a little twisted?
Zac stated that we'd be getting our hands on premium content before the end of 2018.
The reason we have this info is because I e-mailed Zac at the time for a response. Other may have too, I only know what I did.
If anyone is looking for information, just PM someone at Frontier. They are decent people with jobs they enjoy, so I'm sure they'd appreciate it if you ask nicely rather than being all tin-foil hat obnoxious about it. I'm sure a refund could be negotiated too if that's the preferred option.
Maybe that's because those silly semantic arguments that some people have been trying to make are so nonsensical they are refuted even by FD's official publications.
You know, the part where they refer to upcoming LEP content as "promised content", right in their Annual Report?
It's always endlessly amusing where ridiculous semantic arguments based on "well they didn't actually promise to develop content" are directly refuted by an official statement from FD.
Thank you for verifying that. I just spent the last half hour or so looking at Frontier Expo 2017 footage which is where I thought I'd seen that announced but couldn't find it. Must have been some other public event.
Anyway, this is why I believe we're seeing LEP holders wondering what's going on. I for one hoped to at least hear some indication of when that paid content would be making an appearance by now. The year is half over, so the clock is ticking. We've been getting details about Q4, so it seems unusual that we haven't heard a peep about this other content.
Well argued. I hope those things happen.
You may have exposed my cunning plan.
Yes...it needed to be cunning.
That must have been difficult to admit. You are brave, but sharing is caring.
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That would be nice. I said it was what I was expecting, it's not meant as a dev quote* it's just my guess. With an added unless something goes wrong and recognition of delays being likely.
I'm not sure LEP refunds would be possible for players with thousands of hours logged four years down the line and prior to the games entire content being delivered.
Cosmetic refunds lol.
*that's just what a secret dev would say.
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