Latest CG, the clearest example of P2W in ED to date?

[Greasetrap42]

It's only relevant because people keep insisting they're competing with one another when they're really not.

CGs don't involve competition with other players? Really?

• Do you understand how the ranks work?
• Have you noticed nearby markets get drained? Who is draining them?

Also, players aren't just playing against others. They have their own goals.
As stated by others repeatedly, P2W aspects can also exist in single player activities or games.

Yes, credits, which you can earn plenty of during this CG without buying a Panther Clipper and also get any number of other ways. You can earn more in the same amount of time if you get a PC, but credits are so easy to come by that it hardly matters.

Credits in fast and huge quantities. This CG is fast and easy for gaining large credits.

• Billions can be easily gained for players to purchase a fleet carrier, or several years of maintenance for a fleet carrier.
• An extra Billion can be handy for purchasing/outfitting a 2nd Panther Clipper.
• Players such as myself took the opportunity to slurp up credits to offload to their alt cmdr(s). Pay for their Fleet Carrier and multiple years of maintenance.
• My alt was able to increase trade rank to Elite. Shinrarta Dehzra unlocked. Another benifit of a big trade CG.

When collecting billions of credits the percent increase offered by the Panther Clipper becomes significant. "It hardly matters?" -> do the math!!!
Also the number of trips the optimized SCO also makes it much more pleasant than T9 or Cutter.

 

[WillFrog]

CGs don't involve competition with other players? Really?

Really.

• Do you understand how the ranks work?
• Have you noticed nearby markets get drained? Who is draining them?

Yes, I understand how the ranks work, and I also understand that the ranks don't matter. Look, I already had several billion. I earned about 1.5 from this CG so far. That puts me in the top 25%, for which I'll earn about another 250 million, which is nice to have, but it's not particularly important at this stage. And if I dropped down a rank, I'd lose out on 50 million, which ... meh. Whatever. I really don't care very much where I end up ranking-wise.

Credits in fast and huge quantities. This CG is fast and easy for gaining large credits.

• Billions can be easily gained for players to purchase a fleet carrier, or several years of maintenance for a fleet carrier.
• An extra Billion can be handy for purchasing/outfitting a 2nd Panther Clipper.
• Players such as myself took the opportunity to slurp up credits to offload to their alt cmdr(s). Pay for their Fleet Carrier and multiple years of maintenance.
• My alt was able to increase trade rank to Elite. Shinrarta Dehzra unlocked. Another benifit of a big trade CG.

All of which you can do in a Cutter or T-9 without paying real money.

When collecting billions of credits the percent increase offered by the Panther Clipper becomes significant. "It hardly matters?" -> do the math!!!

Does it though? A rough bit of maths after looking at the numbers on Inara says that if I made 30 runs hauling titanium in my PC vs my Cutter, I'd make about 700 million more. Now, that's not nothing, but it's not a huge amount of money the way things pay these days.

Also the number of trips the optimized SCO also makes it much more pleasant than T9 or Cutter.

Oh, definitely. But I don't think anyone was arguing about what it's like to fly.

 

[Darth Ender]

I think the argument here is that, yes, it was super easy to make credits and do cg's before paid ships. Yes, content was paywalled since horizons regularly so it's part of the game's dna. But some players think it's a skill to grind a boring repetitive mindless activity for hours on end and they deserve to be the richest or at least, to be the ones getting cg rewards. Nevermind that it doesn't matter how rich anyone is to anyone else.

The same people will complain about anything that threatens to take their skill away.

 

[vanFace]

The Arx money isn't keeping the lights on or for continuous development it's a small amount probably enough for the team to get Cookies from the cookie shop in Cambridge ? Or a pizza to share? If it was I would be very worried .

This might be the case at the moment. But we were talking about how far they could go, and my statement was about potential future ARX options. With them, the ARX money could very well keep the lights on. At one point, selling the product will not cut it anymore, after all the market will be saturated, and a digital product will not rot like eggs or potatoes. At this point, the continuous ARX income should be there... or bust.
I, for one, welcome our new P2W overlords. Hail to the ARX.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

And I get accused of spohistry... (I'm being polite)

You do? So do I!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

How do you stand on the issue of darts? Sport or not?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It's only relevant because people keep insisting they're competing with one another when they're really not.

For one person to be in the Top X% another person cannot be. That's simply how percentages work. Same goes for the top 10.

If CGs ranks were determined by fixed amount hauled, eg: Rank 3 if you personally haul 10,000 tons, then there would be no competition with other players. Buying the PC would still be advantageous, and still have an element of P2W (as long as you agree saving time is a form of win - which you dispute, but whatever).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

But some players think it's a skill to grind a boring repetitive mindless activity for hours on end

Do they? I don't recall seeing anyone making that argument.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

This might be the case at the moment. But we were talking about how far they could go, and my statement was about potential future ARX options. With them, the ARX money could very well keep the lights on. At one point, selling the product will not cut it anymore, after all the market will be saturated, and a digital product will not rot like eggs or potatoes. At this point, the continuous ARX income should be there... or bust.
I, for one, welcome our new P2W overlords. Hail to the ARX.

How about FD did what they originally indicated they would do - regular content based DLCs and earn money that way?

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

How about FD did what they originally indicated they would do - regular content based DLCs and earn money that way?

Unfortunately the Odyssey catastrophe killed that model for the time being. With the current revival of the game it might become an option again in the future.

 

[angusmadmac1]

It's pretty clear the Panther clipper is advantageous to the CG and the reason for the CG at this time is to sell the Panther clipper .
To be in the top 75 or the top 10 is a competitive you have to beat other commanders .
The higher you go up the bigger the difference is in time spent .
Yes Fdev are being naughty and I'm truly sad to see it, but not particularly surprised the money creep has started and will reach a saturation point where arx bought drops below a set level.
A subscription would tie Fdev into more regular content drops which would be more work for them and more entitlement from the community.
I'm not into killing thargoids, I'm not into colonisation, I'm not onto PP ( "what have the Romans ever done for us" sort of thing ) .
So yes they are between a rock and a hard place but hopefully with more and more people questioning Fdev's ethics ? Fdev may take note .
I want to play this stupid time-consuming game , I'm happy to contribute but I won't throw money at you willy nilly make me want to buy the unicorn paintjob with rainbow lasers and stars shooting out of the engines .

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Unfortunately the Odyssey catastrophe killed that model for the time being. With the current revival of the game it might become an option again in the future.

One bad DLC doesn't mean they should give up. Also, they left the game to rot DLC wise for many years between Horizons and Odyssey.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

One bad DLC doesn't mean they should give up. Also, they left the game to rot DLC wise for many years between Horizons and Odyssey.

I wouldn't call the free Beyond update "rot". It was in many many ways one of the best updates the game ever got and could have well been sold as DLC, but wasn't.

 

[Rat Catcher]

One bad DLC doesn't mean they should give up.

Their board probably disagrees with you.

But their board apparently does agree with Early Access for Arx

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The Panther might end up as the first ship surpassing the previous now available for credits ship in the statistics while still in early ARXess.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I wouldn't call the free Beyond update "rot". It was in many many ways one of the best updates the game ever got and could have well been sold as DLC, but wasn't.

Not sure there was anything in Beyond that could have been sold as the killer DLC feature. Perhaps core mining? But locking core mining behind a DLC would probably have caused a lynch mob to form.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How about FD did what they originally indicated they would do - regular content based DLCs and earn money that way?

Like, say, a "Panther Clipper Ship Pack"?


The basic problem with Frontier's original plan was that Frontier were hopelessly optimistic about how long it would take to develop a major DLC - 2 years for Horizons (3 if you count Beyond as Horizons+), over 3 years for Odyssey (getting on for 4 if you count the post-release fixes) - and both of those were accused repeatedly by players of being rushed out the door too early once released. Odyssey, of course, was also accused of being vaporware a lot during 2019-2020 because it took so long with so little externally visible progress.

New ships appear to be one of the things Frontier can release on a regular cycle. They aren't the biggest new content, of course, and don't get the multi-million sales that a bigger DLC would (but importantly don't cost even more multi-millions to make either), but "large" and "release regularly" can't be done at once. So that's probably as close to the original plan as it gets.

I wouldn't call the free Beyond update "rot". It was in many many ways one of the best updates the game ever got and could have well been sold as DLC, but wasn't.

Most of it probably couldn't have been sold as DLC, given what it did. It succeeded - and helped the game in general - because it was free
- C&P update: there are really strong reasons to have all players, not just the Beyond purchasers, having the new stricter C&P
- Engineering update: leaving Horizons-but-not-Beyond on the old "god rolls" mechanism with no material trader access would have been possible again, though then you have the occasional thing like the class 5 Cutter/Panther Prismatics which can't be obtained in the new system
- Mining update: restricting the new mining tools to Beyond would certainly have been possible
- Exploration update: I think it would at best have been a lot of extra work to have the ADS/DSS continue in Horizons but the FSS/DSS2 in Beyond, especially since anyone switching back from the Beyond client to the base game client would then have lost their ADS
- Squadrons: could have been made separate but clearly benefited from everyone being able to join in (maybe they could have restricted Squadron leadership to people with a Beyond license?)
- Fleet Carriers: ended up two years late which was bearable for a free release but would likely have been a horrible mess if they'd been advertised up front. Certainly could have been made an exclusive, though.

 

[amigacooke]

The basic problem with Frontier's original plan was that Frontier were hopelessly optimistic about how long it would take to develop a major DLC

If I recall correctly, Horizons wasn't released as a total package at launch, but with a headline feature and 'promises' of others to come. Odyssey was supposed to be the whole deal on release, but was such a mess that it required many updates to get it to 'release' standard.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If I recall correctly, Horizons wasn't released as a total package at launch, but with a headline feature and 'promises' of others to come.

Yes, though sufficiently strong promises that Frontier nevertheless needed to follow through with them before Horizons could count as "done". They'd probably not have headlined 2.3 with Multicrew if they hadn't said before the Horizons release that it would.

Odyssey was supposed to be the whole deal on release, but was such a mess that it required many updates to get it to 'release' standard.

Yes. Having had Horizons be a struggle because of the incremental development and needing to advertise features long in advance, Frontier then discovered the big problem with the alternative of releasing almost nothing for most of three years.

What they need are things that they can release as mostly-functional with no more than a year's development to avoid either having to announce things well outside their reliable planning window or having very extended dead time. But that means doing smaller things to start with.

 

[amigacooke]

Yes, though sufficiently strong promises that Frontier nevertheless needed to follow through with them before Horizons could count as "done". They'd probably not have headlined 2.3 with Multicrew if they hadn't said before the Horizons release that it would.

Yes. Having had Horizons be a struggle because of the incremental development and needing to advertise features long in advance, Frontier then discovered the big problem with the alternative of releasing almost nothing for most of three years.

What they need are things that they can release as mostly-functional with no more than a year's development to avoid either having to announce things well outside their reliable planning window or having very extended dead time. But that means doing smaller things to start with.

I think you've previously said that new ships are only self financing and therefore not really helping to 'keep the lights on', that falls to new sales. So nothing has really changed as Frontier need to keep producing new or updated features to generate the bulk of the ED income.

I believe Arthur (our once and future king) suggested in an interview that the lead time for the features was about two years. So the model really stays pretty much the same, just the packaging Frontier chooses to put on it alters.