Hey! Why does FD still charge $$$ for the base game?

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Was it? Was this pre-alpha days?

from the Kickstarter pitch (like i said, i respect why FD went the way they did, but oh how i would love to be able to buy 2nd hand ships with different skins like in the past games, or earn ship kits and bobble heads by doign in game stuff.!.... and if that meant letting some money rich time poor "whales" buy a cutter then so be it, so long as i can still get it in game... and hell it would have made sure FD kept control of their economy and exploits )


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/faqs

Will the game be free to play after the initial purchase?

We do not plan to make it subscription-based. Once you have purchased the game up front, you will be able to play thereafter for no further cost. Everything in the game will be purchasable with in-game Credits, earned from trading, bounty-hunting, etc. We will probably allow the supplemental purchase of Credits with real money, for those who want to accelerate their progress through the game.

We do plan to charge for additional updates, to be available sometime after the original release. These will offer additional content, features and gameplay.

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

from the Kickstarter pitch (like i said, i respect why FD went the way they did, but oh how i would love to be able to buy 2nd hand ships with different skins like in the past games, or earn ship kits and bobble heads by doign in game stuff.!.... and if that meant letting some money rich time poor "whales" buy a cutter then so be it, so long as i can still get it in game... and hell it would have made sure FD kept control of their economy and exploits )


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/faqs

Will the game be free to play after the initial purchase?

We do not plan to make it subscription-based. Once you have purchased the game up front, you will be able to play thereafter for no further cost. Everything in the game will be purchasable with in-game Credits, earned from trading, bounty-hunting, etc. We will probably allow the supplemental purchase of Credits with real money, for those who want to accelerate their progress through the game.

We do plan to charge for additional updates, to be available sometime after the original release. These will offer additional content, features and gameplay.

Oh yea. I forgot about some of the kickstarter wording. Doh! Glad they used the word "probably"...they should have used the same phrase for offline mode
I'm actually glad FD went down the path they did...although the odd in-game achievement skin/bobble head wouldn't be that bad...I love some of the NPC skins.

 

[ChrisF0001]

If a game starts out free, I am suspicious that it's going to be riddled with microtransactions. They've got to be trying to make money somewhere...

If a game starts out B2P and suddenly becomes free, I am suspicious that there's something going seriously wrong, and it's either doomed or about to become riddled with microtransactions. Or both.

I see neither as a good sign.

 

[Spacecat]

yeah, $60 for both seems like a lot.

 

[Miko]

God, reading some posts here has me unsettled even more than usual.

My opinion...

The base game is presently not worth selling under the label "Full Game" as displayed in digital stores. It's not a very good package anymore considering there are zero planets you can interact with, which add more immersion to the game. It's space with some sites to visit or mining to be had dotted about here and there and some stations to land at. It's pretty basic now. Labelling it as FULL GAME is misleading.

I dislike the fact it lacks Engineers yet pits those same folks in the same Universe as people packing serious firepower and shields with Horizons. Very bad in my opinion.

I also have to express my distaste for the fact that FD charge for every single cosmetic pretty much, despite this being a fully paid for game. Were we not entitled to changing even a mere colour to our ships in Elite without further coughing up rather high prices in cash?

I'm sorry, but to anybody encouraging this just because they love the game, especially anybody audacious enough to suggest they'd happily see Elite become subscription based; well, I have this to say to you... Take a hike.

 

[LostBoysGaming]

Uhm, FarCry 3 is not free yet! Nor the base game, neither the dlcs...
Most games cost money, that's not really new or odd.
In my opinion they should make base game and Horizons one package and done though.

There are people who CAN'T play Horizons, for example those whose cards don't support compute shaders or who are running 32bit system.
And Fdev's monetary plan is quite different from Bungie's, if you hadn't noticed. Or are you suggesting that putting the base game free and selling a mandatory DLC for 60 bucks would be improvement over what Elite sells for, now?

Console for the win!

 

[oscarolim]

God, reading some posts here has me unsettled even more than usual.

My opinion...

The base game is presently not worth selling under the label "Full Game" as displayed in digital stores. It's not a very good package anymore considering there are zero planets you can interact, which add more immersion to the game. It's space with some sites to visit or mining to be had dotted about here and there and some stations to land at. It's pretty basic now. Labelling it as FULL GAME is misleading.

I dislike the fact it lacks Engineers yet pits those same folks in the same Universe as people packing serious firepower and shields with Horizons. Very bad in my opinion.

I also have to express my distaste for the fact that FD charge for every single cosmetic pretty much, despite this being a fully paid for game. Were we not entitled to changing even a mere colour to our ships in Elite without further coughing up rather high prices in cash?

I'm sorry, but to anybody encouraging this just because they love the game, especially anybody audacious enough to suggest they'd happily see Elite become subscription based; well, I have this to say to you... Take a hike.

They do have some (albeit little in quantity) free stuff on the store.

Personally, I very much prefer them selling cosmetics than credits, which was the original ideia.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

yeah, $60 for both seems like a lot.

last week it was £8 for base game £16 for the deluxe edition with horizons.....

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

There are people who CAN'T play Horizons, for example those whose cards don't support compute shaders or who are running 32bit system.
And Fdev's monetary plan is quite different from Bungie's, if you hadn't noticed. Or are you suggesting that putting the base game free and selling a mandatory DLC for 60 bucks would be improvement over what Elite sells for, now?

erm.... these people wont be playing it full stop for much longer (i thought it had already dropped 32 bit and mac support to be honest but if not it is imminent. I DO feel sorry for the Mac gamers, more forward thinking from FD and they would have known the game should never have been offered to mac users, but FD did not realise that the mac was so badly gimped and that its archaic openGL would be unsuitable.

The entire future of the game should not be hamstrung because of a tiny proportion of gamers.... esp when there are options. no pc which is above minimum specs for the game is unable to run a 64bit os and macs can still run the windows version as i understand it. (and you can get a windows key for under a 5er!)

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Let me fix that for you: Video game development company (Bungie) stops charging money in return for its product (Destiny 2), news at 11.

destiny does have multiple expensive expansion though. Elite has one... and it is cheap as chips. when DLC # 2 arrives i think we will see something... but i hope it is not the base game free, for the reasons already covered... but i think horizons given out to all base game owners makes sense to stop the userbase getting more fragmented

They do have some (albeit little in quantity) free stuff on the store.
Personally, I very much prefer them selling cosmetics than credits, which was the original ideia.

for me it is not the cost of the stuff which spoils it for me. The entire store could be free and i would still not like it much. my issue is it is not earnable in game. That is how i care about "stuff". I am not bothered about a hutton mug bobblehead that i got from the store..... but one i got for delivering 30 tons of scrap and picking up 10 tons of hutton mugs i would thing would be brilliant.

the best for me were the decals for participating in the beta a year or so ago.... i got them for doing ingame stuff. still not quite as good as doing specific lore related stuff and missions in game, but still way better than anything else i have gotten for my ships

 

[Miko]

They do have some (albeit little in quantity) free stuff on the store.

Personally, I very much prefer them selling cosmetics than credits, which was the original ideia.

That's why I used the words "pretty much". You can get some shades for your Avatar entirely free but if you want to display your ship labels etc, cough up cash.

Personally, as much as I appreciate development costs are enormous these days, thus the upkeep is generally behind the decision making with some devs these days, I still dislike the fact Elite has been a very slowly developed title that also benefited from a Kickstarter, I might add, that considers it entirely acceptible to lock almost every basic cosmetic behind a pay wall.