As an LEP owner, what are both your expectations from the game going forward and what you'd hope for it?

This is a continuation of the conversation here. → https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ss-holders-update.462900/page-45#post-7816706

Naturally if you feel this thread is of no value and the topic doesn't warrant further conversation, feel free to complain about it in hopes that it'll be closed as well.

For the rest of us, as per the actual topic of the thread: How do you think things are going so far? Is the game all that you had hoped and expected it to be by now? And, what is your outlook for the potential of the game going forward?

Personally, I certainly expected more "premium" expansions by now or their equivalent, but I'm in it for the long haul either way and want the most for the game and my enjoyment of it. In that sense the comparatively significant price of my purchase of all future expansions with the Horizons announcement LEP in 2015 in addition to Elite: Dangerous earlier that year is somewhat written off anyway. Perhaps a lesson in living and learning, but I did expect more from Frontier at the time, though more wasn't actually guaranteed.

From my perspective at least, the Horizons release was awesome and did a lot to further flesh out the galaxy in which we care to play as Commanders in the Pilots Federation in 33XX. There was so much potential there, and it seemed to just be the beginning. Since then content expansion has seemed to have been more focused on the MMO gameplay progression meta and ease of access aspects of the game, i.e., not really what I was hoping for, though I suppose a nice QoL and gameplay incentive for some.

Don't get me wrong, I think the galactic sim and sci-fi setting are otherwise second to none, and I commend Frontier for their triumph in those regards. For the bulk of my LEP now though, it's been several years since then where I'm left wanting more of the potential of the game to be fulfilled.

This is why I bought the LEP.
 
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Pretty similar:

  • Disappointed by the progress made towards the big 'roadmap' goals / paid DLCs
  • Underwhelmed by the Seasonal delivery format
  • Seeing it as a lesson learned in many respects, but still strangely ok with having 'helped' this odd, overly-ambitious, game along.
  • Glad they're moving away from Seasons (even if it means more waiting)
  • Quietly confident the 2020 DLC could be a decent improvement
  • Would be very surprised to get the full LEP money's worth from this point.
  • Do think the game could still go some fun places :)
  • Will be along for the ride ;)
 
  • Kickstarter backer from day one;
  • Never played any MMOs or modern games, so no bias on what to expect, and therefore had no expectations;
  • Really happy with the game - still playing it regularly, there's always something to do. In fact, it's an amazingly beautiful game;
  • Horizons blew me away and I realised that FD are capable of putting in some serious developments to make the game even bigger than it is;
  • Would have liked space legs by now, or any other expansions, but either way not that bothered when they arrive;
  • Generally I think things are going well - the recent QoL updates made a massive difference to my play style - being able to SC to locations is a really nice bonus;
  • I work in S/W development, so when bugs happen, it doesn't bother me too much - hey, file a bug report and get on with life - real or simulated;
  • In all, very satisfied, very happy and really looking forward to the next few years of updates
 
This is a continuation of the conversation here. → https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ss-holders-update.462900/page-45#post-7816706

Naturally if you feel this thread is of no value and the topic doesn't warrant further conversation, feel free to complain about it in hopes that it'll be closed as well.

For the rest of us, as per the actual topic of the thread: How do you think things are going so far? Is the game all that you had hoped and expected it to be by now? And, what is your outlook for the potential of the game going forward?

Personally, I certainly expected more "premium" expansions by now or their equivalent, but I'm in it for the long haul either way and want the most for the game and my enjoyment of it. In that sense the comparatively significant price of my purchase of all future expansions with the Horizons announcement LEP in 2015 in addition to Elite: Dangerous earlier that year is somewhat written off anyway. Perhaps a lesson in living and learning, but I did expect more from Frontier at the time, though more wasn't actually guaranteed.

From my perspective at least, the Horizons release was awesome and did a lot to further flesh out the galaxy in which we care to play as Commanders in the Pilots Federation in 33XX. There was so much potential there, and it seemed to just be the beginning. Since then content expansion has seemed to have been more focused on the MMO gameplay progression meta and ease of access aspects of the game, i.e., not really what I was hoping for, though I suppose a nice QoL and gameplay incentive for some.

Don't get me wrong, I think the galactic sim and sci-fi setting are otherwise second to none, and I commend Frontier for their triumph in those regards. For the bulk of my LEP now though, it's been several years since then where I'm left wanting more of the potential of the game to be fulfilled.

This is why I bought the LEP.

I'm in for the long haul myself.

ED in itself has been a great experience and it has been interesting watching it develop over the years. There have certainly been some missteps along the way but we still have an awesome game on our hands here.

I'm looking forward to seeing where things go in the future, there is certainly a lot of potential but it very much remains to be seen how much of that can be tapped and how quickly. It is also unclear if the game will develop in a direction I enjoy, the Dev's certainly have a tough time on their hands pleasing the various different player groups it is possible they'll focus on a direction I disfavour. So far it's been pretty positive, though I'd certainly do a number of things differently if was just me.

As for value for money, that's tricky. I've probably had more hours out of ED than just about anything else and I've enjoyed that time.
I've also put more money in to it than just about anything else, both in terms of the game directly and ancilaray hardware to improve the experience. I can't really hold FD accountable for the latter of course, that's on me :D
So, hmm, I think my past self rather expected more paid updates at a slightly quicker pace than we've seen - so to some extent the LEP has under-delivered. On the other hand it has been a great experience and I've gained some benefit from the LEP with the expectation of more in the future.
Overall I feel happy to have supported FD with the LEP when they needed a bit more cash on a promise, that hasn't quite played out how I expected but I don't regret the choice*.

So, ED is good, I expect more in the future and I think, on balance, the LEP has been worth it for me.

* It certainly seems to have been a vastly better move than any of my SC backing.
 
When Horizons dropped it came out of a clear blue sky, no one expected such an extensive addition to the game, and over the next couple of years as everyone was complaining about how slow it was going I always thought they were busy in the background working on the next big update and I expected it to be access to all the other planet types.

I was dead wrong with that, as it turned out the game had been in maintenance mode all that time and they seemed to just wake up after Horizons and realise "Wow, people are still playing this, maybe we can so something with that!" and they decided to flesh out some of the placeholder mechanics like exploration and set it up so they could sell another expansion for the game.

And I know a lot of people will say "how can you call it maintenance mode, we got X and Y and Z during horizons", yeah fair enough, but as far as I'm concerned there was nothing that came out during that time that held a candle to the initial effort to create the game in the first place or what we got at the start of Horizons where we got to land on planets. Plus, they've said it themselves, they are now in "Full production mode" for the release next year, which means they weren't in that mode before.

So now the roadmap leak tells us we're getting Legs and base building, but no mention of Atmospheric landings, which for me is a bit of a deal breaker. If I want FPS game play, I'll play Battlefield. A game which works so well because it's so well balanced, something that will certainly be missing from Elite when it gets Legs because they've never tried to balance it before, so I don't expect that to magically materialise in the game suddenly with a new DLC drop.

I watched an FTR stream recently where he said he didn't understand why Frontier didn't put more effort into Elite as there was obviously plenty of people out there that would spend real money for a space game that wasn't just about space when SC has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for nothing but vapour-ware.

I'm not an SC backer BTW, and never will be, but I feel that at this stage Chris Roberts has been way more honest and up front with his customers than David Braben. I mean, CR is incompetent and has burned a lot of people's money and will certainly not be able to deliver on every promise he's made, probably not even most, possibly not any.

But at least he's been trying all this time.

Frontier have delivered (pretty much) what they actually said they would, but they painted a much bigger panorama when this whole thing started and over the years they have misled by their reticence. Allowing people to continue to believe things were happening with the game with clearly never were, farming the cosmetics income in the mean time and adding a few baubles to the game to keep it ticking over.

So I'll play Legs when it drops next year, 'cos I've got my LEP, but if they don't give us access to the rest of the planets then at the end of the day it'll leave me disappointed in the whole Elite Dangerous project.
 
If I would just look at the money the LEP wasn't a good purchase so far. But I already anticipated that when I bought it. Being the reasonable person that I am (just joking) I asked myself if I really care for the money and the answer to that was no. If I would be looking for the best deal I would've just waited until there is a GOTY edition or something similar.
No, for me Elite is the definitive space game and I wanted to be part of it as much as possible regardless if it saves me money or not. The reasons for buying the LEP were beta access, supporting the Devs and the luxury of getting any possible new content automatically.

The number one reason for buying the LEP was the wishful thinking that Elite will still be developed years after release. That seems to be the case and knowing how many resources they still put in it while any other publisher / developer would've just taken the money and ran just shows how dedicated they are to their work.

That sounds more like a fanboy than I want to be, there are so many questionable design decisions, failed communications, long standing bugs and placeholders. But supporting such a niche game for such a long time is pretty awesome, even if I don't always agree with them.

So yes, I am still happy that I bought the LEP, even if it's just to be happy that not everything needs to be CoD or Battle Royale.
 
Some more than expected quality of posts on this thread so far. It just goes to show that given a good premise for context, leastwise in my opinion, this community can and will come together on the general premise for our hopes and expectations for the game, despise perhaps some of us being as much forum dwellers as game dwellers and having our own personal objectives for further development.

We all live in a yellow submarine, or something like that. ;)

Thanks for giving me some hope yet. Sometimes the context of things can be a bit washed away with the progress of time.

That being said, for some others, I can hope Frontier is capable and willing to offer a refund or reimbursement of the difference. Good faith is what has brought some of us to the LEP and likewise I think it is fair that Frontier might be willing to reimburse some others on good faith accordingly. I don't mean it as a slight either way, and understand the complications Frontier may have faced in finding a viable way to introduce and implement their vision and potential for the game overall.

To be clear, that isn't what this thread is really about anyway; it's more of just a realization of the state of things as they might be for some of our fellow LEP owners. Hope you all understand where I'm coming from here, though fair enough if on this specific account you disagree with my assessment.

What I said about hoping for the most from the game more than any other stipulations is entirely accurate, and I do respect Frontier for doing, presumably, what they've been able to toward those ends.
 
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Sorry about the tangent there. Just wanted to account for the state of things as it pertains to some of my fellows and their expectations getting the LEP. Hope you understand.
 
This is a continuation of the conversation here. → https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ss-holders-update.462900/page-45#post-7816706

Naturally if you feel this thread is of no value and the topic doesn't warrant further conversation, feel free to complain about it in hopes that it'll be closed as well.

For the rest of us, as per the actual topic of the thread: How do you think things are going so far? Is the game all that you had hoped and expected it to be by now? And, what is your outlook for the potential of the game going forward?

Personally, I certainly expected more "premium" expansions by now or their equivalent, but I'm in it for the long haul either way and want the most for the game and my enjoyment of it. In that sense the comparatively significant price of my purchase of all future expansions with the Horizons announcement LEP in 2015 in addition to Elite: Dangerous earlier that year is somewhat written off anyway. Perhaps a lesson in living and learning, but I did expect more from Frontier at the time, though more wasn't actually guaranteed.

From my perspective at least, the Horizons release was awesome and did a lot to further flesh out the galaxy in which we care to play as Commanders in the Pilots Federation in 33XX. There was so much potential there, and it seemed to just be the beginning. Since then content expansion has seemed to have been more focused on the MMO gameplay progression meta and ease of access aspects of the game, i.e., not really what I was hoping for, though I suppose a nice QoL and gameplay incentive for some.

Don't get me wrong, I think the galactic sim and sci-fi setting are otherwise second to none, and I commend Frontier for their triumph in those regards. For the bulk of my LEP now though, it's been several years since then where I'm left wanting more of the potential of the game to be fulfilled.

This is why I bought the LEP.

As a topic in the area for general discussions related to the game it is of course on topic, in an area for news and announcements somewhat less so at the moment.
 
As a topic in the area for general discussions related to the game it is of course on topic, in an area for news and announcements somewhat less so at the moment.
Fair enough, though as a relevant discussion point overall, as you say, I think it bears some merit. In the other thread I thought it was on point in regards to communication with Frontier about it in general. I do see you point though, and don't think you're mistaken.

Cheers.
 
As a LEP owner, I usually stop reading posts that start with "As a LEP owner ...

;)

No worries, mate. Don't mean to speak on behalf of every LEP owner with this thread. Hopefully It's giving a chance for them to voice their own opinions and perspectives. It's actually my aim with starting this thread, believe it or not, not just pushing my agenda or what have you.

Cheers.

...

The following, for what it's worth, played at 11 on the hi-fi surround sound while out in the black pretty well explains my own perspective in all this.



Apologies if that's too enigmatic or whatever. ;)
 
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I've got two accounts... one has the LEP, one doesn't ( though i did buy horizons for the second separately).
The two accounts are indistinguishable as far as I'm concerned.

As for my expectations, i scrubbed the LEP as sunk money a year or so ago. Still delivered more than the same amount of money i threw at Star Citizen... same same for Limit Theory ( which at least has admitted to being a cancelled/ failed project.... but Elite wouldn't be the first game I've played where a LEP-Style system didn't amount to much, thus my indifference over the whole thing.

I have 30 weeks game time racked up, and that would be there, LEP or no.
 
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Actually i dont really care anymore. To me the LEP was a loss and i dont play ED anymore.
Its just to boring and time consuming. I still like to fly around but get bored to fast.
Actually some of the new changes are worse then before, but thats my opinion.
Till 2020 there will no new stuff anyway.

Are the new community goal really new or just renamed and the same old stuff ? Is it even worth doin ?
With new combat Zones and with limited time every time have fun collecting combat bonds.
In the same time you can do better stuff to earn money, just waste of time.
Is that the new concept to get ppl to play this goals because you can change and pick some things ? Ok only if you in the group with the most ppl.

I lost hope for this game, im waiting and waiting but to me it seems there is nothing new gameplay wise.
Sure you get some new ships and modules/weapons but gameplay wise nothing new or some improvement for existing gameplay stuff.
Is the new scanner a gameplay improvent ? I would say its a qol improvement but not gameplay wise only changed or some other way to do the same stuff like before.
New mining only changed options, not sure if its for the better but of course some diversity.
Is there any nice multiplayer content that makes sense to play in multiplayer ? Maybe PvP wise but whats about other game options ? Teamplay ?
Do squadrons anything aside from communication? Are there still bugs left when in teamplay ?

I got and play this game for over 4 years now well playing is less.
I dont say this game did not evolve and improve, but gameplay wise to me its more and less the same as back then.
In 2,5 months i will have that LEP for 4 years and im disapointed with the developement progress.

Give me a reason to play again beside collecting stuff to mod my ships.
 
Actually i dont really care anymore. To me the LEP was a loss and i dont play ED anymore.
Its just to boring and time consuming. I still like to fly around but get bored to fast.
Actually some of the new changes are worse then before, but thats my opinion.
Till 2020 there will no new stuff anyway.

Are the new community goal really new or just renamed and the same old stuff ? Is it even worth doin ?
With new combat Zones and with limited time every time have fun collecting combat bonds.
In the same time you can do better stuff to earn money, just waste of time.
Is that the new concept to get ppl to play this goals because you can change and pick some things ? Ok only if you in the group with the most ppl.

I lost hope for this game, im waiting and waiting but to me it seems there is nothing new gameplay wise.
Sure you get some new ships and modules/weapons but gameplay wise nothing new or some improvement for existing gameplay stuff.
Is the new scanner a gameplay improvent ? I would say its a qol improvement but not gameplay wise only changed or some other way to do the same stuff like before.
New mining only changed options, not sure if its for the better but of course some diversity.
Is there any nice multiplayer content that makes sense to play in multiplayer ? Maybe PvP wise but whats about other game options ? Teamplay ?
Do squadrons anything aside from communication? Are there still bugs left when in teamplay ?

I got and play this game for over 4 years now well playing is less.
I dont say this game did not evolve and improve, but gameplay wise to me its more and less the same as back then.
In 2,5 months i will have that LEP for 4 years and im disapointed with the developement progress.

Give me a reason to play again beside collecting stuff to mod my ships.
TLDR

The games been pretty kool so far. Horizons and the little tid bits were ok. If 2020 is paid content and I get it free.
I'm happy.
Most games are done with dlc in one year or two.
 
From a purely monetary persepctive, my LEP was a good purchase so far. I'd already reached the break-even point with Horizons, so everything after that is pure gravy. Fortunately for me, I didn't buy the Horizons LEP, which at the time I felt was overpriced, given the estimated three major releases that were still to come.

As for the pacing in general...

Based on what had been said at the time, I'd felt that they were aiming for release every two years, so in a weird way Horizons released early but completed late, we had an unexpected "free" season in between to fix or flesh out quite a few things, and because of that the next major release is late. I'd really hoped that I would be either exploring the insides of my ships, stations, and bases by now; or landing on the surface of atmospheric worlds. The fact that I'm not is a bit of a let down.

But on the other hand, I've always felt that game developers tend to be wildly overly optimistic when giving us ETAs regarding game releases, and mentally add a year or 50% to an estimated timeline, depending upon the time frame provided. So in that sense, Frontier Developments is doing about as well as my more realistic expectations were, and some of the improvements to my game in Beyond were significant improvements. All in all, I'm content to wait for 2020 to see what the "next era" of Elite Dangerous will be.

At least I won't have to Buckyball it back to the Bubble one I've reached Beagle Point. I've still got the rest of the year to make it back. ;)
 
I'm a beta backer, but also bought LEP for my alt. Given that I've had 4 and 5 years play I can't complain that I've not had my moneys worth; especially if the 2020 content is paid for.

The only 'complaint' I have is the freebie we got last Christmas; the skins were for ships I don't fly, and I don't do bobbleheads - but that's my problem, not the LEP.
 
Expected an expansion pack pretty much every year or two (excluding general game dev delays) mostly due to the use of "season" and the original plans from FD.

Feel like there needs to be at the least another two paid for horizons level expansion packs released before I'd count the LEP as fullfilled to my expectations when I purchased it.
 
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