Frontier charging money for things?
OUTRAGE!!!!!!!!!!
OUTRAGE!!!!!!!!!!
E: D monetary policy gripe
- Thread starter AeonPrime
- Start date
They key point I think OP is making is that "we have paid money for things", but some of those things are being withheld.
That yes you've paid for 2.3. So it seems odd the cosmetics choice in the game for 2.3 features should be so limited. Yet oddly there will be 2.3 cosmetics in store to buy.
The point is not really about not wanting to pay for things, it's a concern about having what you've already paid for withheld.... for some reason.
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Can you not please? I wanted to have a civil discussion about this topic >_> But people like you keep popping up and just throw meaningless words into the room.
If you are trying to troll at least put some effort into it, this just hurts to read.
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I just came think of all those hours spent in the clothes stores in GTAV... and didnt pay real moneys for a single item.
Its the right way to do cosmetics imo.
Imagine if FD just hired one or two guys/gals to do nothing but make cosmetic items for ships... so every week or maybe month there would be new skins, kits... to buy with IN-GAME credits.
And perhaps even make "Rare" skins and decals that you get from certain missions?
Or.. certain, special places where there are "Paintjob" shops.
And have some skins that are Unique that you HAVE to buy from the store with real money, cause i like the idea of supporting FD and ED.
Alot can be done with cosmetics beyond microtansactions.
Its the right way to do cosmetics imo.
Imagine if FD just hired one or two guys/gals to do nothing but make cosmetic items for ships... so every week or maybe month there would be new skins, kits... to buy with IN-GAME credits.
And perhaps even make "Rare" skins and decals that you get from certain missions?
Or.. certain, special places where there are "Paintjob" shops.
And have some skins that are Unique that you HAVE to buy from the store with real money, cause i like the idea of supporting FD and ED.
Alot can be done with cosmetics beyond microtansactions.
This is true and may come.
Paintjobs make good prize give aways too though, so you make hay while the sun shines?
[up]
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The idea that extra clothes options and vanity stuff should have been included in the game is the stumbling point here. Just why do you suppose that what you can buy in the Store, should have been in the game? No one needs anything more than a suit and a head. After that, it's extra stuffs, and it;s reasonable to ask us to pay for extra stuff. We disagree on what should and should not be included with the game purchase.
You have to do a way better job convincing me that vanity stuff should be included in game. So far I see people inflating what they bought to include what they want.
You have to do a way better job convincing me that vanity stuff should be included in game. So far I see people inflating what they bought to include what they want.
Let's wait and see what is gratis when 2.3 drops.
Someone linked me the VOD of the 2.3 stream, when it comes to the list of features included Ed just talks around the topic with careful wording. Based on Fdevs track record in terms of common sense I don't see the base set of cosmetics being included in the game sadly.
Reasoning: 2.3 Is not yet released. All efforts should go into the release of said update. All content DONE by the release of 2.3 should be included in the update because we already paid for it in the season pass.Creating a base set of ship skins takes literally no effort, hell most game engines allow hue sliders in game for things like that. That is what that season pass money was for. Developing assets and features for the game.
The money we spend on the game should be used to fund further development of the game, we can agree on that. And removing completed assets from headline features to sell them back to us seems like a move to me. Same with the ship skins, I will never buy a skin pack in this life, I don't want to support this practice in any way.
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1. 900 hours is a *lot* of gameplay for what you might have shelled out (cosmetics not included)
2. It's a full price game, a full price expansion to that game and micro transactions for cosmetic features. This is far from absurd. In fact, it's so normal in the current market that to do anything different could be considered absurd.
If you want a free game to play, go play one. There are loads out there. You have a nice day too.
He calls it withheld and others might call it in active development.
Cosmetics are 100% optional and if he or anyone else don't like them then they don't have to purchase them.
Still. You haven't explained why cosmetic and vanity stuffs should be included in the Horizons Season pass. They aren't charging more for the Holo-me feature. Just, potentially, some of the unnecessary, but desirable items. It is not reasonable to expect everything to be folded into the base purchase. Just because this stuff may have been developed and released after Horizons, there is no reason to assume it must be included in the season pass.
I think most past games where you can "dress up" characters or ships or whatever have offered a good range of items to do that with. I mean GTA was cited on the previous page. I see this as normal, it's fundamental to the feature since it enables use of that feature.
Given Frontier are developing features to dress up characters, and dress up ships via name plates or id plates, I would like the money I've already paid for this feature to provide enough content to use this feature, with enough choice that keeps everyone happy for a decent period. Not that out of the door you're looking to buy stuff because the current choice is lacking.
That to me is an underdeveloped feature, possibly underdeveloped intentionally to have people buy content that technically was already paid for, since it was created during the 2.3 development period.
I know it's not as clear cut as this, but for me no 2.3 cosmetic content should be charged for until 2.4 is out. After that yes charge, because development focus has moved beyond 2.3 and so it's reasonable to charge for work that isn't for 2.4. This seems fair.
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You can buy that game for $45.
A friend of mine bought ED for 60 and then droped to 30 lol. He will not buy any DLC.
Common sense would be why. I really don't mind paying for vanity items. Does it look cool and special? Take my fracking money all day every day. But having a minimum of customisation is industry standard. Battlefield, Borderlands, GTA, Halo, Xcom and so on. All have season pass content but still include basic cosmetics. Some sell extra fancy stuff for cash, others lock them behind ingame achievments.
I just don't agree with the mentality of day one DLC, the most cancerous behaviour ever developed by the game industry. And Fdev has been doing that from release sadly.
God I'm in a really tight spot right now. I really want to continue this conversation right now but its 1:16AM here >_>
Then don't buy it. You do have a choice.
To change Frontier marketing policy, buy a crap ton of their stock and bring it up at the next shareholders meeting.
Alright I feel like the following things might upset some people, I'm fine with that. I tried to be as factual as possible, based on my own experience, documents provided by Frontier and price statistics from SteamDB. You can be upset about facts but there is little reason in arguing about them. I've spent over 900 hours in this game since the closed beta in 2014 and I think I have a grasp of what this game is.
- General consensus: A company needs to generate profit, satisfy investors and keep employee numbers equal to work load.
On that note, lets get started.
- Base game price
The Base game price should cover the cost of development and advertising and at least 6 months of online services from release AND generate profit. The price is based on the number of copies you are expecting to sell and on the quality of the product you are selling. The main sales period for a game is around 1-3 months after release and if you don't make your money back by then you are probably screwed.
The basegame content for Ewas below average, a pretty barren and empty procedurally generated galaxy is a technical masterpiece but borderline boring from a gameplay perspective. Sure it was pretty, but something that needed to be upgraded later down the line. Visually stunning but at launch not much more than a tech demo with sim elements. The first year of content was average, a few new ships and features but nothing groundbreaking.
Some paid more due to beta access or lifetime passes but I think the pricetag of 50€ on release was justified. Just your average AAA pricetag. The price has dropped over the 1.5 years but that is the nature of software and where DLC's come into play.
https://i.gyazo.com/964a00f687da791ce3f3b05036c5a1f7.png
(small sidenote, paying for Beta access is the worst. People are willingly subjecting themselves to something that is even buggier than the release version, submitting bug reports and suggesting changes. In other communities you GET something for that, not pay for it.)
- DLC policy
E
The first Season "Horizon" was set to be released in 2016 as previously stated on the E
The first 2 DLC's in the season were more than broken on their respective releases, performance problems and bugs introduced in those updates are still present in the most recent version of the game.
-2.0 planetary landings - interesting from a technical point of view, boring in terms of gameplay since there is nothing to do apart from gathering materials for an underdeveloped feature.
-2.1 Engineers - probably the most disliked feature of E
Also introduction of avatars for npc's, ugly muffins but the feature works. Passenger missions are a reskin of hauling mission with talking cargo , general improvements to missions for the cost of constantly losing connection to said mission server.
-2.2 2 new ships and the addition of SLF for bigger ships. Decent feature, limited use. First "appearance" of aliens after over a year of community effort to find said aliens. Station overhaul is a nice visual addition and the scripted alien encounter was a nice addition, my youtube sub box was full of E
-2.3 Seems to focus around QoL features and the Character creator with some features yet to be announced. which brings me to my final point for DLC policy - lack of information
-2.4 Is a mistery update, no one knows what the feature list is, which is a terrible thing from an advertisement view. Brings up expectations and hopes - things that have been crushed with almost every E
The timeframe for those features is atrocious, extreme delays NEED to be communicated as soon as they are unavoidable. We still don't know what caused the delay in Season 2 and the lack of communication from the devs regarding progress and delays is probably the worst thing one could ever do as a studio.
People invested into the season pass, expecting a product as advertised, silently changing the text on your ads to reflect new changes isn't the way you treat customers in ANY business.
The pricetag of 40€ on release is justified for the list of features for a year. But Stretched over 2 years the content is lackluster and underwhelming. The current pricetag of 25€ is acceptable for the current content and price decay on season passes is a common thing.
https://i.gyazo.com/0e884bbdf272b0c3fc4add3f58176943.png
- "Micro"-Transactions
E
Borderlands 2 had a lot of cosmetics in the base game, base skins in different colours for the heroes and some bling like custom heads. Also had some dlcs that only added extra bling for the character of your choice. Those were only cosmetic packs and didn't add any gameplay value, similar to ship skins in E
E
Oversimplified summary for textures: Once you have a texturemap for something it takes literally 5 minutes in photoshop to create every other colour variant of said skin. Flat black, green,red whatever. dragging the hue slider to 5 positions in the diffuse map and exporting said texture and packing them is pretty much what a texture artist does once a new skin is done. So not including them in the base game but instead selling BASE COLOUR SKINS as cosmetics is more than arrogant.
I don't mind paying extra for chrome/gold skins. Those need custom specmaps and normalmaps and adjustment to look good. I can see the value in that.
Ship kits are another story, the concept is good. Cosmetic additions that change the shape of a ship and actually have a slight drawback of making your ship bigger and easier to hit in some places.
That being said, the flat textures of ship kits is more than lazy, even re-using some of the ship skin would have been more acceptable than something that looks like straight out of Maya or 3DS Max.
And now the thing that actually got me to write this rant.
Commander customisation. If frontier continues with their current policy of "take it or pay up" there won't be any free customisation in terms of suit versions/colours and ship name plates.
For this to be even remotely useful there have to be at least a few base colours for the suits and 1-3 suit versions to choose from. You can't put this as a headline feature for a paid DLC AND charge money for content that is there from day one. Give people at least the basic stuff, they paid for it in form of DLC content already.
I know thats a wall of text so here is a TL;DR.
Yes, FDev needs to make money.But having a full price game, full price season pass AND micro transactions for basic cosmetic features is absurd. I can see the value if things actually require work but not having at least basic colour cosmetics is lazy as all hell. I've read multiple times that Fdev NEEDS the money to survive, utter nonsense according to the fiscal reports for 2016. The company is doing just fine. Form your own opinion but at least base that opinion on facts and not just belief. I don't support lazy cash grabs, I just want the content I paid for and not some stripped down version of it just so they can sell it as DLC on day one.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day.
Nicely said and written, have some rep!
Alright I feel like the following things might upset some people, I'm fine with that. I tried to be as factual as possible, based on my own experience, documents provided by Frontier and price statistics from SteamDB. You can be upset about facts but there is little reason in arguing about them. I've spent over 900 hours in this game since the closed beta in 2014 and I think I have a grasp of what this game is.
- General consensus: A company needs to generate profit, satisfy investors and keep employee numbers equal to work load.
On that note, lets get started.
- Base game price
The Base game price should cover the cost of development and advertising and at least 6 months of online services from release AND generate profit. The price is based on the number of copies you are expecting to sell and on the quality of the product you are selling. The main sales period for a game is around 1-3 months after release and if you don't make your money back by then you are probably screwed.
The basegame content for E
Some paid more due to beta access or lifetime passes but I think the pricetag of 50€ on release was justified. Just your average AAA pricetag. The price has dropped over the 1.5 years but that is the nature of software and where DLC's come into play.
https://i.gyazo.com/964a00f687da791ce3f3b05036c5a1f7.png
(small sidenote, paying for Beta access is the worst. People are willingly subjecting themselves to something that is even buggier than the release version, submitting bug reports and suggesting changes. In other communities you GET something for that, not pay for it.)
- DLC policy
E
The first Season "Horizon" was set to be released in 2016 as previously stated on the E
The first 2 DLC's in the season were more than broken on their respective releases, performance problems and bugs introduced in those updates are still present in the most recent version of the game.
-2.0 planetary landings - interesting from a technical point of view, boring in terms of gameplay since there is nothing to do apart from gathering materials for an underdeveloped feature.
-2.1 Engineers - probably the most disliked feature of E
Also introduction of avatars for npc's, ugly muffins but the feature works. Passenger missions are a reskin of hauling mission with talking cargo , general improvements to missions for the cost of constantly losing connection to said mission server.
-2.2 2 new ships and the addition of SLF for bigger ships. Decent feature, limited use. First "appearance" of aliens after over a year of community effort to find said aliens. Station overhaul is a nice visual addition and the scripted alien encounter was a nice addition, my youtube sub box was full of E
-2.3 Seems to focus around QoL features and the Character creator with some features yet to be announced. which brings me to my final point for DLC policy - lack of information
-2.4 Is a mistery update, no one knows what the feature list is, which is a terrible thing from an advertisement view. Brings up expectations and hopes - things that have been crushed with almost every E
The timeframe for those features is atrocious, extreme delays NEED to be communicated as soon as they are unavoidable. We still don't know what caused the delay in Season 2 and the lack of communication from the devs regarding progress and delays is probably the worst thing one could ever do as a studio.
People invested into the season pass, expecting a product as advertised, silently changing the text on your ads to reflect new changes isn't the way you treat customers in ANY business.
The pricetag of 40€ on release is justified for the list of features for a year. But Stretched over 2 years the content is lackluster and underwhelming. The current pricetag of 25€ is acceptable for the current content and price decay on season passes is a common thing.
https://i.gyazo.com/0e884bbdf272b0c3fc4add3f58176943.png
- "Micro"-Transactions
E
Borderlands 2 had a lot of cosmetics in the base game, base skins in different colours for the heroes and some bling like custom heads. Also had some dlcs that only added extra bling for the character of your choice. Those were only cosmetic packs and didn't add any gameplay value, similar to ship skins in E
E
Oversimplified summary for textures: Once you have a texturemap for something it takes literally 5 minutes in photoshop to create every other colour variant of said skin. Flat black, green,red whatever. dragging the hue slider to 5 positions in the diffuse map and exporting said texture and packing them is pretty much what a texture artist does once a new skin is done. So not including them in the base game but instead selling BASE COLOUR SKINS as cosmetics is more than arrogant.
I don't mind paying extra for chrome/gold skins. Those need custom specmaps and normalmaps and adjustment to look good. I can see the value in that.
Ship kits are another story, the concept is good. Cosmetic additions that change the shape of a ship and actually have a slight drawback of making your ship bigger and easier to hit in some places.
That being said, the flat textures of ship kits is more than lazy, even re-using some of the ship skin would have been more acceptable than something that looks like straight out of Maya or 3DS Max.
And now the thing that actually got me to write this rant.
Commander customisation. If frontier continues with their current policy of "take it or pay up" there won't be any free customisation in terms of suit versions/colours and ship name plates.
For this to be even remotely useful there have to be at least a few base colours for the suits and 1-3 suit versions to choose from. You can't put this as a headline feature for a paid DLC AND charge money for content that is there from day one. Give people at least the basic stuff, they paid for it in form of DLC content already.
I know thats a wall of text so here is a TL;DR.
Yes, FDev needs to make money.But having a full price game, full price season pass AND micro transactions for basic cosmetic features is absurd. I can see the value if things actually require work but not having at least basic colour cosmetics is lazy as all hell. I've read multiple times that Fdev NEEDS the money to survive, utter nonsense according to the fiscal reports for 2016. The company is doing just fine. Form your own opinion but at least base that opinion on facts and not just belief. I don't support lazy cash grabs, I just want the content I paid for and not some stripped down version of it just so they can sell it as DLC on day one.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day.
And I agree with you. Only one correction to make: I believe we will at least get 6 basic pilot suit colours by default with Commander Creator. I do however believe FD have at times taken the pee in terms of overcharging us for the absolute bare minimum of effort like the block colour ship skins. And currently I feel that not offering us a basic ship nameplate livery as part of buying the Horizons season pass would be a very poor show by them.
Likewise, I can't expect you to fully comprehend the relevance of what I wrote either.
To quote your exact words: the demand is created artificially by removing content from the game that should have been there to begin with.
The majority of people are buying the product without complaining. A small percentage are complaining about the price (or in your case trying to prove that you should have received more for your money). That's exactly what I suggested a profitable pricing model should be like.
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You can also buy extra in that game and they sell stuff up to $15.000, that was my point.