If nothing else, my ignore user list has a few new names on it, from this thread.
Frontier is playing with fire regarding Steam
- Thread starter MrRixter
- Start date
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Wonder how long that took to plan, prepare and execute? You seem to imply that it occured within a couple of hours.
Wow, plenty of Steam peeps who've been boiling their wee-wee here then... 
If there was an issue with the way the steam release was handled it is having two different store pages, and then allowing them both to stay up simultaneously.
Someone at FDEV needs to get in touch with steam and sort this out, it is a serious oversight, and the only complaint that was justified in this entire thread. I also have to wonder why Horizons is listed as early access, it may be 12 months of forthcoming updates, but its an upgrade expansion to an existing game, not a stand-alone product.
Someone at FDEV needs to get in touch with steam and sort this out, it is a serious oversight, and the only complaint that was justified in this entire thread. I also have to wonder why Horizons is listed as early access, it may be 12 months of forthcoming updates, but its an upgrade expansion to an existing game, not a stand-alone product.
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Wow, plenty of Steam peeps who've been boiling their wee-wee here then...
In fairness to them, the situation at around 4pm yesterday looked like an utter mess; all their copy of Elite looked like was a link to download an install an entirely new, independent one outside the auto-patching background update system they were used to. On a day where everyone knew the (slow at the best of times) Frontier servers were about to take a massive hammering from the Horizons people, they were effectively being told to download the whole 35+ Gigabytes of game from scratch and wave goodbye to all the Steam features they were used to. Some even thought that meant their CMDR save wouldn't carry over.
So I get the panic, and the boards here being full of people responding to said panic with "Steam's evil anyway, Frontier are doing you a favour by putting you through all this", give or take added insults for choosing to use the system in the first place, didn't exactly help.
All of this could have been avoided by Frontier being more clear about how Steam updates being "soon" meant "by the time the game's actually playable again", rather than "in about the same three months it took us to get on Steam the first time". But hey. It's all done and dusted now.
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That's the problem, though. It's not an expansion, it's a stand-alone product that happens to work together in a consistent universe with an existing one. That's the retail model, at any rate, and Steam are primarily a retail outlet.
In a word rubbish, Fdev have simply chosen not to autodetect the correct version of the client under the hood, instead leaving the client a choice.
Pick any mmo that has offered paid expansions, including those on steam, Final fantasy, elder scrolls online, neverwinter, secret world, even non mmo such as racing games, and not one requires separate store pages for the expansions. All allow every owner to continue playing on the same servers but maintain gated content, no different from ED. It it is simply the front end, and the way the separate code branches are accessed that differs.
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That isn't the only problem, nor the only solution for that matter. As it is now, it seems as though Steam users who don't dig deeper than should be reasonably expected of them are being setup to needlessly reinstall additional redundant versions of the game, especially if they already have access to the additional seasons of the game on their FD account.
In ten years will I have ten versions of this game listed in my Steam games library? But more importantly, how many people that don't know any better will have ten copies of the same game needlessly installed in different folders?
What people seem to not be understanding is that both versions of the game are the same game (excluding an additional 32 bit version of the game for Elite: Dangerous for backwards compatibility). It's only your access privileges on Steam and your FD account that determine what skin of the launcher and versions of the game you can run, not what you install from Steam.
This is how it should have been handled and should be handled going forward...
Horizons and subsequent seasons should be listed as expansions on Steam that you register on your FD account when you rerun the launcher and log in again after the install updates your game. The seasons should not reinstall additional copies of the game erroneously as a different game.
If you already have access to additional seasons and additional content is available, you should be able to access it by launching the base game through Steam instead of having to launch the same game installation outside of Steam. This way additional Steam keys wouldn't be needed. (Heck, they're not exactly needed now anyway, provided you want to fiddle with your install files outside of Steam.)
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Oh, I know it's a weird way to do it, and everyone else makes expansions appear as DLC items in Steam. But this is what Frontier have chosen to do - Horizons is an independent product as far as the store goes, so appears as a separate item to be installed in a separate folder. Why they've chosen to do it that way is anyone's guess.
It might take a little while to propogate but you can buy through steam for sure.
Hey I got my Horizons key.. Thanks
Left you guys a positive review.. You deserve it upon merit
Wow, plenty of Steam peeps who've been boiling their wee-wee here then...
indeed.. and the big sign read "beware the little sign below"
Ok, enjoy the never ending updating ressource hog that is the steam client. Its still the worst piece of bloatware I can think of.
Also the way instancing works in this game will require things to be handled differently.. as it stands now we have a 32 and 64 version of Elite: Dangerous for Pc, and the 64 version of Horizons for Pc.. Not to mention the XBOne and Mac players.. for all intense purposes, that is 5 seperate games connecting to a single persistent background simulation.
Folks are also comparing this launch akin to something that comes with an advanced release date.. It isn't, it was pushed for yesterday, so there were likely many factors, that had the potential to hold things up, or provide opportunity for wires being crossed. did it even occur, that the way things went down could have been an issue at Steams end?
These kind of reactions are pretty extreme.. unfounded accusations and name calling.. aggression in lieu of patience, and lacking some simple basic forethought before putting mouse to forum. Instead we have Frontier being painted as money grabbers for selling their own game, and suggestions that the paper boy should be having a say in the running of the news paper he delivers for. These are truly interesting times in which we live.
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So I downloaded the 8gb update on Steam last night. I see both 32bit and 64bit, and since I have a high end rig of course I choose 64bit. Loads up fine, says version 1.5 in the bottom left corner. I look at my loadout on my Vulture, and I notice at the bottom it has the planetary landing module added in, I go to some planets and it allows me to plot a course to the station on the planet (even though I havn't tried to physically land on it yet). I see I can buy the newer ships that were just released. Am I missing something? I didn't buy Horizons, but it looks like I still got the Horizon stuff, or am I wrong?
I just noticed this on Steam. Horizons expansion is a separate entity not tied to the original game? What the hell? This will be ridiculous mess in a short while with forums, community and future expansions. This is extremely bad move if all future expansions will be handled like this.
we now have 32 bit and 64 bit version of ED and the 64 bit version of Horizons.. of course they are separate entities. going forward everything will be 64 bit so this wont be an issue.. its a limitation enforced by the *OS/client/motherboard not by FD. if you are playing Horizons, that's the only install you need. hence why we also need a separate steam key to activate it. It is a standalone game that contains the full base game inc 1.5.
*or whatnotthingydriver
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Okay so maybe Im not getting this. Steam wise they are selling on two different product pages, therefore it is two different installations. Are you telling there is no difference between them at all? I was under the assumption that on Steam 1.5 is called Elite
angerous and 2.0 is called Elite Dangerous:Horizons. So therefore the installations are different as Horizons needs additional data to be installed?You the same guy that gave us all your professional opinion about how to run a software development company here ?
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=213046
what exactly are your qualifications in this area...... ? you seem to be stirring up a great deal of crap with no apparent inside knowledge
well seeing as horizons is only 64bit.. the main reason behind all this.. and that fdev are only maintained the 32bit version of the game to allow those players without 64bit systems (~1%) to continue playing the game. it's actually pretty cool of them, as it creates more work for them overall. also why shouldn't 32bit owners have access to what is a great game even without horizons.
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