Notice ARX and Frontier Points Conversion

[StuartGT]

Meh.

The main issue for me will always be the real-world price of a ship kit or a paint job once Ive done the conversion, the same way I treat Frontier Points at the moment. I can't do that conversion until I know the ARX cost of the various items and I suspect we won't get that information until the update goes live.

What will upset me (and presumably everyone else) is if there's a significant difference in the real-world cost of any particular item after the conversion to ARX and/or if my existing Frontier Points lose value in terms of spending power when they automatically get converted to ARX at the time of the switch-over. FD have to be very careful about that.

I often bought the 1000 point bundle on PS4 (which was the best value of the various packs at £9.79 UK) each time I bought a new ship in-game. That would be enough usually for a ship-kit and a paint job, sometimes with a little left over. I was okay with that, £10 to customise a new ship seemed reasonable, I don't often buy ships so it was always a bit of an 'occasion'.

If the new system somehow results in a ship kit & paint job costing significantly more than £10 real-world currency (17,700 ARX going by the info in the OP) I might just give the kits a miss in future and save up the free points to get a paint job.

Of course the other problem for FD in my case is I've now got all the ships I really want - so they better come up with some new ships sometime soon!

Obsidian Ant: Confirmed Time Requirements To Earn Cosmetics With ARX (Plus Real World Costs)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvFQL-HsWNc Description: New details from Frontier on the September update showing details on the real world cost of ARX Cosmetics, along with how long it will take to earn Cosmetics in-game.

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Nasc]

which only works out if it's your parents who pay for the power bill

How unfortunate if you still live with your parents. Stay strong!
I factor my power costs into consultancy personally. If it's on anyway, a good ol' lakka band round the joystick will do.

 

[znôrt]

Microtransactions deserve a good, hard and pitieously harsh critique. I've done that and Arx pass the test. They are good for us and good for Frontier.

i'd argue that the structure of 'packs' isn't aimed at minimizing transaction fees. for that you can simply pass them on to customers (then it's their decision) or you can just set a minimum quantity. even a progressive discount if you want. nope, those packs are designed to get the average sheep to spend more than it normally would. it's not good, it's disgusting. yeah, others do worse.

 

[StuartGT]

question when is the next major expansion like horizons due out a rough time frame next 5 years or ten? some kind of answer is all many want
my guesstimation is it wont hence no mention of it ,any real development of this game ended when horizons was released I think, all we have had is tweaks and minor additions in reality and that's all well ever get it seems

We have known that the next paid-for expansion - "New Era" - has been in full production for a year now, and is expected to launch sometime in the second half of 2020. Leaks suggest it'll contain space legs, base building, and FPS combat with Thargoids.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/important-community-update.444800/unread

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/bgu3pe Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/bgu3pe/psa_the_first_game_on_the_leaked_frontier_roadmap/

 

[STRONTIUM DOG]

oh I stand corrected an official confirmation would be nice, till I get that I still don't believe a word of it, come 2021 you can say I told you so
and I will eat a large slice of humbled pie...……………..

 

[StuartGT]

oh I stand corrected an official confirmation would be nice, till I get that I still don't believe a word of it, come 2021 you can say I told you so
and I will eat a large slice of humbled pie...……………..

An official confirmation that they are still working on the next expansion? Or the content of said expansion?

 

[STRONTIUM DOG]

that they are working on the next major expansion yes?
I dont care about its content only that a new major paid for expansion is in development

 

[Darkfyre99]

Microtransactions are necessary for a company to sell cheap stuff and not be bankrupted by bank fees. There is absolutely no way that we could buy a decal for £0.03 with a credit card that charges the seller a £0.20 fee, often a currency conversion fee and where a significant number of these purchases will be subject to a charge-back fee. Microtransactions where we pay in bulk for multiple purchases are the only way that we can get the stuff that we want to buy. We do it now with paint and decal packs and we eill do it in the future with Arx.

This is the most important thing. The company I work for shares a lot of its financial data with its associates, and it's really eye opening how much "bank transactions" cost us on a monthly basis. It's also one of the motivations for pushing our company credit card to both our associates, and to our customers. Given that it offers 3% cash back to all grocery purchases, that says something about how much the banks charge companies for access to their credit cards...

 

[StuartGT]

that they are working on the next major expansion yes?
I dont care about its content only that a new major paid for expansion is in development

Sure, no worries

From August 2018:

We do have one exciting piece of news to share that to date, we have not shared with our community. A while ago, our development went from pre-production into full production on our next major milestone of Elite development.

What that means in the simplest terms is that the team are actively working on the next major landmark which takes us into our next era for Elite. We aren’t going to be ready to talk about or announce any details for quite a while yet, it is early in the development and there is still a long way to go, but I can say that this is something that will be scheduled to release a considerable time after the final update in the Beyond series. We will have more details on exactly what this means and how the era will roll out after the release of Beyond – Chapter Four, but this does mark some exciting next steps and a continued commitment to the long term vision for the game and our community.

Naturally, there will be community questions that might come up from this information. We aren’t going to be ready to talk about what method or model the content will be. What we can say is that it’s expected to be a major milestone in the history of Elite and will be paid content. Lifetime Expansion owners will obviously receive the content as part of their pass.

And back in March 2019:

The Next Era

Back in August, we mentioned that the team had begun work on the next major era of Elite. We believe this will be a defining moment in the history of the game and it will be our biggest update yet.

In that post, we explained that the content was still very early in development, so we won’t be ready to announce it for a while. To give this more context, in order to realise the ambition for this update, and the size and scope of the content we wish to bring to the Elite Dangerous galaxy, we estimate this major milestone will be ready by the latter half of 2020.

As development progresses, we will share more news and announcements on features, as well as timelines regarding this upcoming content for Elite. We can understand that having a long wait for news can be frustrating, but we truly believe that this will be the single most impactful update for our community. Having a development team dedicated to this milestone is our continued and unwavering commitment to making Elite Dangerous the most authentic, ambitious, and expansive evolving space game in the world.

As mentioned in our previous post, this new era will be paid for content and all lifetime expansion pass owners will have this included in their pass.

 

[aRJay]

any news on stuff like atmospheric landings, you know the promised stuff we really wana hear about!
instead of stuff to line FD pockets...……….

Everything in the game is to line FD pockets, well theirs and the pockets of various governments, Steam, Sony and Microsoft.

 

[Dutchman141]

This is the most important thing. The company I work for shares a lot of its financial data with its associates, and it's really eye opening how much "bank transactions" cost us on a monthly basis. It's also one of the motivations for pushing our company credit card to both our associates, and to our customers. Given that it offers 3% cash back to all grocery purchases, that says something about how much the banks charge companies for access to their credit cards...

For costumers that's often very hard to understand.
Heck they even charge me for owning a certain credit card alone, admitted it has some added advantages, without even making a transaction.
Banking costs are on the rise these days, soon we'll have to pay for a savings account in the Netherlands while in the past you got a savings interest worth a couple percent.

 

[Dutchman141]

Everything in the game is to line FD pockets, well theirs and the pockets of various governments, Steam, Sony and Microsoft.

Yup, that's business for ya, it's been this way since ages.
I don't get why people are still surprised about that.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I guess the key question is how much an individual paint job costs. Currently the cheapest packs are 50p which equates to about 100ARX. Can't see there being 4 free paint jobs a week

1000 ARX ... 1p = 20 ARX

 

[Patrick_68000]

I take 85000. Twice.

So you'll get 200,000

 

[Patrick_68000]

5000 ARX - 2.99 GBP / 3.49 EUR / 3.99 USD

400 for max amount of playtime per week

with about 3 GBP like cheapest paint job

so for a simple painttjob it would be around 12,5 weeks ?

motivating ? to me not

Your calculation is good for me in the case of pack of six paintjobs.

Anyway the goal is not to make too many gifts but to earn the money.

 

[Patrick_68000]

How this is right now:
1. £3.00 6 paintjobs = £0.5 1 paintjob
View attachment 142761

2. £3.00 is 5000 ARX , lets say we divide this by 6 is = 833 ARX is one paintjob.

So this means when we have 400 ARX per week we get one free paintjob around 2,2 weeks / 13,2 weeks (3,3 months) entire paint pack

And on the condition of winning 400 ARX in one week. Which is not automatic for everyone.

 

[znôrt]

I don't get why people are still surprised about that.

honestly, i would have expected frontier to be more tactful and classy in this. examples: you can argue that horizons is p2w but, well, not-really-quite-considering and in any case it's not blatant like in other games. plus they do charity livestreams. and science! and how they care about the community etcetera. they have always maintained that cool image of themselves, that would set them apart in the industry. well the arx selling screen is just a rock right into that glasshouse: they have entered now the same league, just to squeeze a bit more out of our pockets.

so i am surprised, but unaffected: i couldn't give a flying arx about paintjobs anyway.

(but be my guest! thanks to all those funding the game for me! (or frontier's new empire, prioritization may apply!) )

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

Being in-game but inactive will not reward you with ARX. It isn’t based on time spent in-game, but on the actions you take.

So if I stick an elastic band around my controller to make the ship rotate and another to hold the fire button and I'm in an asteroid field does that flag as engaging in mining?

 

[Dutchman141]

honestly, i would have expected frontier to be more tactful and classy in this. examples: you can argue that horizons is p2w but, well, not-really-quite-considering and in any case it's not blatant like in other games. plus they do charity livestreams. and science! and how they care about the community etcetera. they have always maintained that cool image of themselves, that would set them apart in the industry. well the arx selling screen is just a rock right into that glasshouse: they have entered now the same league, just to squeeze a bit more out of our pockets.

so i am surprised, but unaffected: i couldn't give a flying arx about paintjobs anyway.

(but be my guest! thanks to all those funding the game for me! (or frontier's new empire, prioritization may apply!) )

I complain a lot about Fdev being as silent and non transparent as they are.
Regarding this new arx phenomenon though I think you're over reacting.
They change the currency for pc, Xbox and Ps4 have always had Frontier Points so not much change for them.
There's no proof that the items in store will be more expensive as they were, some people here have shown that certain items will even be cheaper.
All items are cosmetic so they have no effect on gameplay at all, I see no pay to win in ED at all.

To place Fdev in line with other Publishers or Developers that practice predatory micro transaction systems is utterly rediculous imho.

I've got plenty of things to complain about regarding ED and Fdev, how they run their store isn't one of them.

 

[StuartGT]

So if I stick an elastic band around my controller to make the ship rotate and another to hold the fire button and I'm in an asteroid field does that flag as engaging in mining?

Have a recording of you saying "BOOOOOM!" playing periodically too