Hopes and fears for the new not-a-season business​ model

[LKx]

...

While your point is probably close to the truth, and facts hint that we've been in the backburner for most of season 2, and with the third game we will still be kept there, i think that they are still looking for revenue from ED.
Of course they couldn't pull the stunt of a season again, and they will have to sell well defined products, but i think we'll still get a bit of love... alas it will probably be very slow.

I just hope that the third game will be something that can have some synergy with future ED development (being that EVAs, city generation, environment generation ecc. For example PC could be seen as a test of environment generation, crowd generation and cloud generation).

 

[Barking_Mad]

Not quite. FD is in the business of putting in the minimum possible investment to develop a "minimum viable product", then using revenue generated from that product to subsidize subsequent projects, and so on. This is what's happened with Elite being aggressively hyped during the first year, allowing FD to bring in over $60 million USD in revenue, then being promptly neglected while they focused on their next product.

FD's shareholders, however, are perfectly happy with the situation because in the meantime FD was developing Planet Coaster with that revenue. We've been getting a "minimum viable" product for Season 2, which will now take two full years instead of one year to deliver, and what little development efforts they do make will be focusing on the console market while the core game stagnates.

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

The endgame for FD in terms of Elite development is finally abandoning the "season model" for Elite because they quite simply have no financial incentive to put anything more than minimal resources into the game at this point. They've realized that there isn't enough trust or goodwill left in the community to pay for content in advance, so they're going to do what they can with ridiculously overpriced cosmetic DLC and the occasional OP "feature" DLC that they hope will get more money out of existing players for as little effort as possible.

There is no "10 year plan" for Elite. There isn't even a "5 year plan". There was a 3 year plan, and we're reaching the end of it. They will keep their inexpensive BGS servers running, which require very little resources due to the game's P2P architecture, probably develop a few OP features and cosmetic DLC over the next few years, but we will not be seeing all of those impressive and immersive features that Braben told everyone about. It quite simply would not be financially viable for them to do so given their focus is on making money for their shareholders.

The really amusing part here is that I identified this problem last year after looking at FD's financial reports and seeing how they were neglecting Horizons and funneling revenue from Elite to develop Planet Coaster instead. I could clearly see where things were headed and now that even the most optimistic Elite players are finally arriving at the same conclusions there's very little FD can do to spin the situation.

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

Edit: Yer wrong.

 

[timbero]

If they announce they will start selling smaller DLCs for 9 euro each I'm probably gonna delete my save file, uninstall the game and forget it ever existed.

As I see it the only reason they would change to this business plan is to increase their profits.

When is the next release (2.4?) scheduled to come out? Is that the last update of this season?

 

[VR Golgot]

Not quite. FD is in the business of putting in the minimum possible investment to develop a "minimum viable product", then using revenue generated from that product to subsidize subsequent projects, and so on. This is what's happened with Elite being aggressively hyped during the first year, allowing FD to bring in over $60 million USD in revenue, then being promptly neglected while they focused on their next product.

FD's shareholders, however, are perfectly happy with the situation because in the meantime FD was developing Planet Coaster with that revenue. We've been getting a "minimum viable" product for Season 2, which will now take two full years instead of one year to deliver, and what little development efforts they do make will be focusing on the console market while the core game stagnates.

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

The endgame for FD in terms of Elite development is finally abandoning the "season model" for Elite because they quite simply have no financial incentive to put anything more than minimal resources into the game at this point. They've realized that there isn't enough trust or goodwill left in the community to pay for content in advance, so they're going to do what they can with ridiculously overpriced cosmetic DLC and the occasional OP "feature" DLC that they hope will get more money out of existing players for as little effort as possible.

There is no "10 year plan" for Elite. There isn't even a "5 year plan". There was a 3 year plan, and we're reaching the end of it. They will keep their inexpensive BGS servers running, which require very little resources due to the game's P2P architecture, probably develop a few OP features and cosmetic DLC over the next few years, but we will not be seeing all of those impressive and immersive features that Braben told everyone about. It quite simply would not be financially viable for them to do so given their focus is on making money for their shareholders.

The really amusing part here is that I identified this problem last year after looking at FD's financial reports and seeing how they were neglecting Horizons and funneling revenue from Elite to develop Planet Coaster instead. I could clearly see where things were headed and now that even the most optimistic Elite players are finally arriving at the same conclusions there's very little FD can do to spin the situation.

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

Next time use this template: 'I was excessively negative in the past. One day you will all see MY TRUTH!'

It's quicker

 

[Demascus]

I am all for getting rid of the "Season" Model. Too much money and wait for uncertain content. I have no more good will left for FD to spend money on "faith" that they will produce something I will enjoy. Looking back at what I use and enjoy from season 2, I should have never bought it.

 

[Kvas]

Not quite. FD is in the business of putting in the minimum possible investment to develop a "minimum viable product", then using revenue generated from that product to subsidize subsequent projects, and so on. This is what's happened with Elite being aggressively hyped during the first year, allowing FD to bring in over $60 million USD in revenue, then being promptly neglected while they focused on their next product.

FD's shareholders, however, are perfectly happy with the situation because in the meantime FD was developing Planet Coaster with that revenue. We've been getting a "minimum viable" product for Season 2, which will now take two full years instead of one year to deliver, and what little development efforts they do make will be focusing on the console market while the core game stagnates.

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

The endgame for FD in terms of Elite development is finally abandoning the "season model" for Elite because they quite simply have no financial incentive to put anything more than minimal resources into the game at this point. They've realized that there isn't enough trust or goodwill left in the community to pay for content in advance, so they're going to do what they can with ridiculously overpriced cosmetic DLC and the occasional OP "feature" DLC that they hope will get more money out of existing players for as little effort as possible.

There is no "10 year plan" for Elite. There isn't even a "5 year plan". There was a 3 year plan, and we're reaching the end of it. They will keep their inexpensive BGS servers running, which require very little resources due to the game's P2P architecture, probably develop a few OP features and cosmetic DLC over the next few years, but we will not be seeing all of those impressive and immersive features that Braben told everyone about. It quite simply would not be financially viable for them to do so given their focus is on making money for their shareholders.

The really amusing part here is that I identified this problem last year after looking at FD's financial reports and seeing how they were neglecting Horizons and funneling revenue from Elite to develop Planet Coaster instead. I could clearly see where things were headed and now that even the most optimistic Elite players are finally arriving at the same conclusions there's very little FD can do to spin the situation.

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

I think you are right, bigger DLC would only fragment the community, there is no win win situation with this kind of move. I reckon we will see more cosmetics though, people here are fanatics and will buy those to "support" the project. I bet if it was a different company/game and they would unbalance the core gameplay like FD did with Engineers it would be long gone. Such a move to promote a DLC is outrageous.

I wonder what will happen with LEP customers.

 

[Devari]

Edit: Yer wrong.

You're going to have to do better than that, given that exactly what I said was going to happen with Elite development is happening.

Next time use this template: 'I was excessively negative in the past. One day you will all see MY TRUTH!'

It's quicker

Apparently I wasn't "excessively" negative, given that what I said was going to happen is actually happening.

 

[Quester91]

Not quite. FD is in the business of putting in the minimum possible investment to develop a "minimum viable product", then using revenue generated from that product to subsidize subsequent projects, and so on. This is what's happened with Elite being aggressively hyped during the first year, allowing FD to bring in over $60 million USD in revenue, then being promptly neglected while they focused on their next product.

FD's shareholders, however, are perfectly happy with the situation because in the meantime FD was developing Planet Coaster with that revenue. We've been getting a "minimum viable" product for Season 2, which will now take two full years instead of one year to deliver, and what little development efforts they do make will be focusing on the console market while the core game stagnates.

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

The endgame for FD in terms of Elite development is finally abandoning the "season model" for Elite because they quite simply have no financial incentive to put anything more than minimal resources into the game at this point. They've realized that there isn't enough trust or goodwill left in the community to pay for content in advance, so they're going to do what they can with ridiculously overpriced cosmetic DLC and the occasional OP "feature" DLC that they hope will get more money out of existing players for as little effort as possible.

There is no "10 year plan" for Elite. There isn't even a "5 year plan". There was a 3 year plan, and we're reaching the end of it. They will keep their inexpensive BGS servers running, which require very little resources due to the game's P2P architecture, probably develop a few OP features and cosmetic DLC over the next few years, but we will not be seeing all of those impressive and immersive features that Braben told everyone about. It quite simply would not be financially viable for them to do so given their focus is on making money for their shareholders.

The really amusing part here is that I identified this problem last year after looking at FD's financial reports and seeing how they were neglecting Horizons and funneling revenue from Elite to develop Planet Coaster instead. I could clearly see where things were headed and now that even the most optimistic Elite players are finally arriving at the same conclusions there's very little FD can do to spin the situation.

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

I think it's impossible to find anything more to add.
Nail. Head.

 

[Devari]

While your point is probably close to the truth, and facts hint that we've been in the backburner for most of season 2, and with the third game we will still be kept there, i think that they are still looking for revenue from ED.
Of course they couldn't pull the stunt of a season again, and they will have to sell well defined products, but i think we'll still get a bit of love... alas it will probably be very slow.

I just hope that the third game will be something that can have some synergy with future ED development (being that EVAs, city generation, environment generation ecc. For example PC could be seen as a test of environment generation, crowd generation and cloud generation).

They are most certainly still looking for revenue from FD, but not the type of revenue that players think. They have a massively lucrative cosmetic DLC model where they can monetize extremely simple DLC that doesn't even have a proper minimum feature set associated with it. I have some laser colors that I would like to apply to specific weapons, but I have to use it for ALL of them because FD couldn't be bothered to put the minimum effort into developing a system where I apply a specific color to a specific weapon. Apparently all they could manage was a global "modifier" even though we ALREADY have Engineering effects that modify specific weapons. How hard would it have been for them to associate a color entry with a specific weapon? Apparently even when we're paying them $1.75 for a single line of RGB code we are still getting a "minimum viable product".

We can't even get value for the cosmetic DLC features out of FD. What makes anyone think we will get them to put all the work developing and testing a proper content update when they admit they can't expect us to pay for that in advance after what they've given the community so far for Horizons?

The other major revenue stream for them is to port what they currently have to the console market. That is actually much easier than most people think as it is basically getting ED to run properly on a SINGLE hardware setup that runs a SINGLE software setup. It doesn't require new content or fixing all of the bugs, they simply have to ensure that they can patch Elite to run adequately on a console setup. In fact there is even enough overlap between Xbox One and PS4 hardware specs that much of their work from one console will translate over to the other one very easily. The downside here is that to get smooth and consistent performance on consoles we have seen massive texture downgrade and performance hits which negatively affects the quality of the PC gaming experience.

Other than cosmetic DLC and consoles Elite is no longer an IP that Braben or FD have any incentive to develop further. The issue that many players STILL don't want to accept is that any major content will take quite bit of time and resources to develop and FD is simply not going to be willing to do that at this stage of development. They had the opportunity to implement some very substantial multicrew features that players were holding out for and instead they gave us a buggy, bare-bones, "minimum viable product" using every possible shortcut (third-person perspective and telepresence) just to get the "feature" out the door. They even tried their usual tactic of making it an OP "feature" with extra power pips, hoping that enough players would buy it just to have AFK accounts.

That was for content we ALREADY paid for, in advance, and after they took one and half years to develop for an update that was supposed to be done within a year. It's not that they didn't have enough time (1.5 years) or enough money (upwards of $60 million USD in revenue within the first two years after launch). It's that they are concerned mostly about maximizing shareholder profits and that quite simply is what is driving the Elite development model.

From a business perspective their decisions do make sense, even if they are terrible for the game, it's just that many players have still convinced themselves that Braben and FD want to make the game they advertised and sold us during kickstarter. They don't. I could clearly see what was driving their decisions over 8 months ago when I looked at their financial reports. The issue is that many players are still in denial and still refuse to accept what's literally right in front of them.

 

[Histarium]

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

Sadly, I think our option at this point is to protest. Tell all your friends the name of the title of the movie and make them pay out of pocket, by boycotting it. I bought Planet Coaster thinking eh why not, supports Fdev, and I have to say that Planet Coaster is the same way really. They opted to have a Steam Workshop so that others could build more content FOR THEM for free. Thats like the ultimate replayability/ hands free thing to do. They do updates once in awhile on the games architecture but there hasnt been any DLC and I dont think there is even plans for DLC for Planet Coaster, I could be wrong.

In june, Stormblood for FFXIV is releasing. Perhaps I'll take a hiatus from Elite Dangerous.

 

[Cosmo]

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

Devari's comment is mostly pessimistic speculation, not factual.

That is nonsense. There's very passionate developers at Frontier who work to make Elite Dangerous better with every major update. They do listen and read feedback. The development pace has been quite slow since launch. What changed is the radio silence about development. We used to get cool teasers, screenshots, artwork in newsletters. Now there's nothing until a few weeks before beta-testing a new update.

We need more dev updates or teasers in newsletters and reassurance that old features will be improved too.

 

[bitstorm]

Sadly, I think our option at this point is to protest. Tell all your friends the name of the title of the movie and make them pay out of pocket, by boycotting it.

It's this sort of thing that makes me ashamed to be part of the ED community.

People like you will ultimately be the reason Frontier cease all communication with their players and just do what EA, Blizzard and every other publisher out there does.

Yes perhaps you should take a hiatus.

 

[Itkovian]

It's this sort of thing that makes me ashamed to be part of the ED community.

What sort of thing? Advising friends that a title isn't currently worth spending money on?

 

[VR Golgot]

Other than cosmetic DLC and consoles Elite is no longer an IP that Braben or FD have any incentive to develop further.

Other than the cash available from paid expansions? Ok...

The issue that many players STILL don't want to accept is that any major content will take quite bit of time and resources to develop and FD is simply not going to be willing to do that at this stage of development. They had the opportunity to implement some very substantial multicrew features that players were holding out for and instead they gave us a buggy, bare-bones, "minimum viable product" using every possible shortcut (third-person perspective and telepresence) just to get the "feature" out the door.

So you agree that major additions will definitely take time under the current multi-franchise scenario, and yet you expected one from a mid-season update which had already dropped its flagship addition? Ok...

From a business perspective their decisions do make sense, even if they are terrible for the game, it's just that many players have still convinced themselves that Braben and FD want to make the game they advertised and sold us during kickstarter. They don't. I could clearly see what was driving their decisions over 8 months ago when I looked at their financial reports. The issue is that many players are still in denial and still refuse to accept what's literally right in front of them.

Tell you what, when they do finally drop something resembling atmospheres or legs, put a sock in it eh. Ok?

 

[Ambroza]

People like you will ultimately be the reason Frontier cease all communication with their players and just do what EA, Blizzard and every other publisher out there does.

Isn't that what's happening already?

 

[Devari]

Other than the cash available from paid expansions? Ok...

You mean those expansions that they took cash up-front for, then failed to develop beyond a buggy "minimum viable product"? Those same expansions that now FD isn't developing as seasons any longer because they know they have lost trust and goodwill among the community to pay for content in advance?

So you agree that major additions will definitely take time under the current multi-franchise scenario, and yet you expected one from a mid-season update which had already dropped its flagship addition? Ok...

When I paid for Horizons, in advance, I expected that we would actually get the features we paid them for within the stated 1 year timeline. How that Horizons has been developed to a very low standard and will take 2 years to give us such underdeveloped features, I don't really expect much from FD any more in terms of content for Elite.

The only thing I see them continuing to put minimal resources into is overpriced DLC, console ports and the occasional OP "feature" every so often.

Tell you what, when they do finally drop something resembling atmospheres or legs, put a sock in it eh. Ok?

Tell you what, if we actually do get anything like that (which we won't) and when it ends up implemented like multicrew as a buggy, simplistic "minimum viable product" then you and all the other white knights can collectively apologize to the forums?

That is nonsense. There's very passionate developers at Frontier who work to make Elite Dangerous better with every major update. They do listen and read feedback. The development pace has been quite slow since launch. What changed is the radio silence about development. We used to get cool teasers, screenshots, artwork in newsletters. Now there's nothing until a few weeks before beta-testing a new update.

We need more dev updates or teasers in newsletters and reassurance that old features will be improved too.

Sorry to tell this to you, but Elite has no "10 year plan". It has a 3 year plan and we're nearing the end of it. Now that they've made most of the money they can expect to get out of the Elite franchise they've been quietly turning it into low-maintenance cash-cow mode for the past year. They won't put in any significant new resources into it at this point. That's why there's the "radio silence". They quite simply have nothing to say.

 

[VR Golgot]

You mean those expansions that they took cash up-front for, then failed to develop beyond a buggy "minimum viable product"? Those same expansions that now FD isn't developing as seasons any longer because they know they have lost trust and goodwill among the community to pay for content in advance?

I'm glad you agree with me that they have 'incentive to develop further', which was the point. You were being excessively negative in stating the opposite. Agreed?

When I paid for Horizons, in advance, I expected that we would actually get the features we paid them for within the stated 1 year timeline. How that Horizons has been developed to a very low standard and will take 2 years to give us such underdeveloped features, I don't really expect much from FD any more in terms of content for Elite.

The only thing I see them continuing to put minimal resources into is overpriced DLC, console ports and the occasional OP "feature" every so often.

Ay, we all want Horizons faster, and I certainly wanted more flagship depth. At least you get to pick and chose your DLC from here on in sunshine. Enjoy

Tell you what, if we actually do get anything like that (which we won't) and when it ends up implemented like multicrew as a buggy, simplistic "minimum viable product" then you and all the other white knights can collectively apologize to the forums?

That was an ironic request, I know you're going to complain regardless

I'm just speaking to intent and publicly made statements. Odds on that we'll see some attempts to fulfil in those areas. Much to your annoyance, apparently

Ain't white knighting, I'm just calling out flawed arguments when I see them. (Your: 'Newly launched self-publishers should put all their eggs in one basket' argument is another one incidentally). There's plenty of legit things to criticise. Getting so angry that you invent imaginary ones is just a waste of time...

 

[Devari]

I'm glad you agree with me that they have 'incentive to develop further', which was the point. You were being excessively negative in stating the opposite. Agreed?

Did you actually read my post? Because it seems that you're confused between substantive development of game content (which they aren't doing) and production of overpriced trivial cosmetic DLC (which they are doing).

I don't consider FD selling a single line of RGB code for $1.75 "development". If you don't understand the difference here I can't really help you.

Ay, we all want Horizons faster, and I certainly wanted more flagship depth. At least you get to pick and chose your DLC from here on in sunshine. Enjoy

There won't be any meaningful content to "pick from". That's the entire point. All you will be seeing is cosmetic DLC, possibly the occasional overpriced "feature" that players wil buy only because it provides a massive combat advantage, that's about it.

That was an ironic request, I know you're going to complain regardless

I'm just speaking to intent and publicly made statements. Odds on that we'll see some attempts to fulfil in those areas. Much to your annoyance, apparently

What "intent and publically made statements"? You mean what they told us they planned on developing during kickstarter? That's long gone, basically zero chance of that happening.

Even their "intent and publically made statements" last year about multicrew weren't delivered. Given how FD has handled Horizons over the past 1.5 years, what makes you think we will be getting ANY meaningful game content going forward?

Ain't white knighting, I'm just calling out flawed arguments when I see them. (Your: 'Newly launched self-publishers should put all their eggs in one basket' argument is another one incidentally). There's plenty of legit things to criticise. Getting so angry that you invent imaginary ones is just a waste of time...

Sorry, but if you are still trying to pretend that FD plans on developing meaningful game content for Elite after what we've seen from them so far, you are white knighting very hard for them.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Not quite. FD is in the business of putting in the minimum possible investment to develop a "minimum viable product", then using revenue generated from that product to subsidize subsequent projects, and so on. This is what's happened with Elite being aggressively hyped during the first year, allowing FD to bring in over $60 million USD in revenue, then being promptly neglected while they focused on their next product.

FD's shareholders, however, are perfectly happy with the situation because in the meantime FD was developing Planet Coaster with that revenue. We've been getting a "minimum viable" product for Season 2, which will now take two full years instead of one year to deliver, and what little development efforts they do make will be focusing on the console market while the core game stagnates.

Now FD has a third "major Hollywood IP" lined up. You can guess what's going to happen over the next few years as they use low-maintenance revenue from both Elite console sales and Planet Coaster to subsidize that.

The endgame for FD in terms of Elite development is finally abandoning the "season model" for Elite because they quite simply have no financial incentive to put anything more than minimal resources into the game at this point. They've realized that there isn't enough trust or goodwill left in the community to pay for content in advance, so they're going to do what they can with ridiculously overpriced cosmetic DLC and the occasional OP "feature" DLC that they hope will get more money out of existing players for as little effort as possible.

There is no "10 year plan" for Elite. There isn't even a "5 year plan". There was a 3 year plan, and we're reaching the end of it. They will keep their inexpensive BGS servers running, which require very little resources due to the game's P2P architecture, probably develop a few OP features and cosmetic DLC over the next few years, but we will not be seeing all of those impressive and immersive features that Braben told everyone about. It quite simply would not be financially viable for them to do so given their focus is on making money for their shareholders.

The really amusing part here is that I identified this problem last year after looking at FD's financial reports and seeing how they were neglecting Horizons and funneling revenue from Elite to develop Planet Coaster instead. I could clearly see where things were headed and now that even the most optimistic Elite players are finally arriving at the same conclusions there's very little FD can do to spin the situation.

Braben, who owns 51% of FD, and the company's shareholders could care less about the situation. They aren't in the business of making Elite into a good game, they simply want to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible. Elite quite simply is not going to be seen as worthwhile for FD to invest more than the minimum amount of resources in at this point.

I'm sure if you spoke to Braben, he would be more than happy to tell you how much he loves ED and how much he wants it to succeed. You can project whatever you want to believe onto him and his motives, but you're almost definitely wrong about this.

Just watch how he talks about ED, the man is obviously highly passionate about the game.

However, he is a businessman, and he needs to ensure the company survives in order to ensure the further development of ED. If you are salty that FD are diversifying their portfolio, and not being a one-game company, then don't be, its a necessary evil to ensure we have future updates to look forward to.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

There won't be any meaningful content to "pick from". That's the entire point. All you will be seeing is cosmetic DLC, possibly the occasional overpriced "feature" that players wil buy only because it provides a massive combat advantage, that's about it.

You're making some very strong statements here with some very large assumptions based on zero evidence.

You might want to dial it back a bit. At least put a few things like "I think" "I believe" rather than making absoloute statements.