ARX Ship Early Access Update

Greetings Commanders.

Alongside the launch of the Panther Clipper MK II on 22nd July, we will also be updating our ARX pricing structure for ships.

New ships will continue to launch in ARX Early Access, before arriving for in-game credits at a later date. You can find the full details here:

https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/arx-ship-early-access-update
It would be great if we could transfer ARX between players, but the usual suspects would mess it up for everyone else. Why can't we have nice things?
 
Bigger ships cost more ARXes? That is just stupid.

The corporate greed exhibited towards ED players* makes me question playing the game.

(* For example: A single-ship paint-job can cost as much as a DLC pack for a Planet game which contains lots of elements.)
Nobody forces you to buy it with Arx, you can just as easily wait and get it with credits. Of someone chooses to pay for it, that's up to them. No corporate greed there at all.
 
Greetings Commanders.

Alongside the launch of the Panther Clipper MK II on 22nd July, we will also be updating our ARX pricing structure for ships.

New ships will continue to launch in ARX Early Access, before arriving for in-game credits at a later date. You can find the full details here:

https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/arx-ship-early-access-update
Can't say I'm jumping for joy over the large ship tax. However, now that we know that the early access ships for Arx have been a resounding success (which I am very pleased to hear), it would be possible to placate my large ship tax blues if Frontier were to provide some hints towards what it will be funding, ie; going towards a major feature update on one of the big feature requests? Or fixing shaders/shadows/aliasing etc? (I can only but try..)
 
Is it just me, or is selling a single ship at the price of a full expansion complete madness? Or is it just foolish that people are accepting this as normal and buying it anyway?
Nah, it's fine. You are only Missing Out a few months of early access to the ship if you don't want to buy it. If this monetization strategy helps keep the game being developed for years to come, I'm all for it. It could be much, much worse (like certain other games I could name).
 
Nothing burger for me, even if it was exclusively paywalled i would not buy it.

Im sitting on 16k arx waiting to spend it, if only they released something worth buying.
 
it would be possible to placate my large ship tax blues if Frontier were to provide some hints towards what it will be funding, ie; going towards a major feature update on one of the big feature requests? Or fixing shaders/shadows/aliasing etc?
People paying for early access to the ships likely funds the development of the ships.

Which is good in general - if the ships can be self-funding then we get more ships and whatever Frontier was going to do anyway - but it's not an income source on the scale of "can fund a major update" for Frontier.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
Greetings Commanders.

Alongside the launch of the Panther Clipper MK II on 22nd July, we will also be updating our ARX pricing structure for ships.

New ships will continue to launch in ARX Early Access, before arriving for in-game credits at a later date. You can find the full details here:

https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/arx-ship-early-access-update
Hi Phil, thanks for the update!

Could you kindly clarify something please from the article?

including two additional new ships

Additional to the Panther Clipper Mk2 (so as per the roadmap we'll get 4 new ships this year) or additional to the roadmap, so that we get 6 new ships this year?

Thanks :) o7
 
Corvette and Cutter MK II? 👀
I think that line refers to the two yet undisclosed ships, the one in autumn and the one coming with the new feature in winter, not another two. As much as I like the addition of new ships, burning through them too fast would eventually get a bit out of hand. I already have to make hard choices which ships to move from my carrier to my home station, I need more ship storage slots....
 
T
People paying for early access to the ships likely funds the development of the ships.

Which is good in general - if the ships can be self-funding then we get more ships and whatever Frontier was going to do anyway - but it's not an income source on the scale of "can fund a major update" for Frontier.
I think its something Fdev are charging for because they can ? Odyssey is £5.99 in steam ( even i couldnt grumble at that) but basically £20 for a stellar ship ? ok no rebuy if you dont change the configuration. I think its a bit disingenous of Fdev make a market for needing big cargo ships and then just charge extra for the biggest one they have made does that give them PC MK 3 and PC MK4 for the new releases (cutter and type 9)? I know that many will buy it because of its cargo because it will make colonisation a bit quicker and Fdev knows that unfortunately.
 
If this monetization strategy helps keep the game being developed for years to come
I see this argument brought forward a lot. It's a massive, massive IF - none of us know how Frontier allocate income from their various IPs. For all we know they might have dumped your Arx purchases straight into funding their expensive F1 licence in the past :p.

And it wouldn't surprise me at all if Elite receives the raw deal compared to other IPs, because they keep getting away with underdeveloped, often uninspired content with an overly accepting audience, so no need to up the budget really.
 
Not a fan of price increases in general, but I'm willing to give Fdev the benefit of doubt. Detailing and greebling a large ship is more effort than a small one considering that now we can stand right on top of ships in first-person view. While completely fine from within ship cockpits and typical camera suit POV, many of the existing large ships (and also Horizons-era planetary assets) feel like from early 3D games if you go exploring their exteriors on foot. Panther and any other new large ships would need a lot of human-scale detailing added to them, that is more man-hours involved that needs to be compensated for.

I was thinking about getting the Stellar version (the prong, yay!), but now it's going to be the standard one. If I weren't so much into colonization, I would skip the early access like I skipped PII, T8, Mandalay and Corsair for which I didn't have a use case (and still don't have a solid use case for Corsair, even though I really like the looks) at release. But there's a little fun colonization project I want to do that'll need an SCO optimized large hauler, so Panther Clipper is a must for me personally.

Is there any information on wether the cosmetics that were removed from the shop when the whole ARX pricing was reformulated will come back? There are a lot of cosmetics missing for every ship (squadron, tactical, military, basic color paintjobs and etc) and even weapon skins and face tattoos. It would be nice to have those back, I still don't even understand why they were removed in the first place. Any update on this would be appreciated, I'm sure many others would like to purchase these old cosmetics as well.
We had the old Chrome and Gold liveries (for a time); can we have the Iridescent ones back? Expanded to new ships, too (I bet Manda and Corsair would look absolutely stunning in them)? Pretty please? :)
Chieftain XL.
Centurion😉
Retributor Mk2; cools the target while overheating your own ship and the overheating mechanic is also much improved.
The ultimate pirating weapon: freezes the targets crew solid so you can take your sweet time liberating the goodies from cargo hold🤪
 
I see this argument brought forward a lot. It's a massive, massive IF - none of us know how Frontier allocate income from their various IPs. For all we know they might have dumped your Arx purchases straight into funding their expensive F1 licence in the past :p.
I doubt that all revenue is "earmarked" based on where it comes from and, thus, where that particular money has to be invested in. Revenue is revenue is revenue. It goes to fund the entirety of what the company does.

Maybe some revenue from ED goes to fund the development of the F1 game. But, conversely, maybe some revenue from the F1 game goes to fund the development of ED. It's all one big money pool.
 
Back
Top Bottom