Horizons price discussion

[CobraKhan]

I thought alot about it the last night. For me, the price is too much, without further informations. The teaser was nice, not more. The game needs alot more improvement in my opnion and I'm not willing to spend more money at the moment.

So I will be patient, look at reviews and of course here what people say when its out, and then I can still buy it, or not. There are other games to come I can spend my time with, we have so much choice

 

[StayFrosty]

Apparently

Well "apparently", Elite: Dangerous has cool cruise ships so you can ferry passengers around, ship crew that you can manage, deep interaction with NPCs influenced by your factional standings, countless interesting missions with branching paths, ship escorts, highly advanced ship cust- oh wait.

Plenty people are already disappointed by the current state of the game which they consider unfinished.

But to reply to your post, features aren't content. You can drive around a planet? Great. What does that planet offer aside from a boring randomly generated terrain? If there's content, meaning, interesting vistas, plenty activities, things to interact with, then it'll be fun, otherwise, it's just a barebones feature that won't be very entertaining. Seeing how barebones most mechanics in this game still are, many people fear that this expansion might be as shallow as the rest of the game.

 

[EUS]

Would anyone here have paid for powerplay?

 

[SSTravis]

What's wrong with racing balloons?

To you it might sound amazing except you're going to be hunting - yeah, good luck getting your tiny dev team to come up with complex AI routines and a lush background to hunt in - try The Hunter but that's only taken years of development - they're making a dino hunter now btw u might like to check out.

ED's hunting game would a) take up all the development time and nothing else would get done and b) would end up with animals as good as the ship AI - in other words, lame.

Do you want a half- hunting game or do you want a space game - what has hunting got to do with Elite?

Haha you people and your negativity. You don't think in a future of interplanetary travel there won't be a market for exotic animals? Anyways I do not argue on the forums. I have said what I wanted to say. It is my opinion. I will not discuss this further.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Apparently Horizons will include flying down to the planet (as a wing) deploying vehicles and attacking bases both in ships and on the surface.

I guess if you have to ask that. It isn't content for you.

Landings on their own are not content. I'm pretty sure FD are going to add something on the planets to make them worth visiting though what that is and how interesting that will be.....

I get the feeling that some people think that they'll land on a planet and suddenly they'll be playing farcry 3 or something with a whole story. Some people in the forums have stated that just landing on planets is enough for them.

If it's a buggy and a planetoid and that's it, then that content should be out in a month since it's nothing worth doing.

 

[Clawhammer]

Would anyone here have paid for powerplay?

Hell NO!

Games like this last a decade and more. To expect content to not be added over that time but magically created all at the beginning would just create an unsustainable request for more and more content and features as the years go by. The big important stuff will come early on (as they seem to be) and become less and less important to the core game as the game ages.

consider 60 bucks a year subscriptions. that's cheap.
consider paying ~180 (if backer) or 240 if you paid for ed after release and bought the lifetime pkg. That's even cheaper over the course of the game's life. It's actually a steal compared to alternatives.

I think people's confusion with threads like this is we dont know what MMO's you're comparing ED to price-wise. Every other one i've seen/played/heard of has cost more per year by far than ED will/has cost me.

Pls tell me, wich other kickstarter game sells "early access season passes" (Or whatever horizon is) for full core game prices. Wich are not complete at launch and need other paid packages to get all features. Ah and dont forget, where you have to wait until all content patches are out so that really everythink is ingame (Wich could take more then a year).

 

[jabberwalkie]

I'm not even sure how to respond to that - you may as well ask me to explain why launching from a station is content.

To some extent it is content in itself I suppose but really it's what you do once you are there that is the content...

If you don't know how to respond, perhaps you don't know the difference between a feature and content? Let me sum it up for you then. Planet landing is a feature that allows you to expand to new access new content. It is not new content in and of itself. Paying for a feature is essentially what we are being asked to do with Braben saying that this is what we could do essentially. If there is something to do once you get there, then that would be content.

Apparently Horizons will include flying down to the planet (as a wing) deploying vehicles and attacking bases both in ships and on the surface.

I guess if you have to ask that. It isn't content for you.

If actually implemented at the launch, then that would be content, which is stuff to do. Planet landing in and of itself is not content. Right now, we got a proof of concept video and livestreams saying that this is where we are headed. I also remember that the bulletin boards missions were being improved. What we have is essentially still the same missions, but that scale. I have little reason to expect a change from the content being more of the same.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Haha you people and your negativity. You don't think in a future of interplanetary travel there won't be a market for exotic animals? Anyways I do not argue on the forums. I have said what I wanted to say. It is my opinion. I will not discuss this further.

Oh and you think there won't be a call for Balloon racing - why are YOU so negative? And how was I negative? I just pointed out the issues of making that gameplay but hand wave away. You didn't understand a word I said, did you.

 

[CrustyGoth]

If the financial model wasn't slipping, the development model wouldn't be slipping. Quite simply put: Money=content=game. In that order.
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Because despite explaining my reasoning, and pointing out that this subject is not as black and white as you would so blithely like to believe, you chose to stick with your grossly simplified version that there are only two sides to the discussion and my explanation does not fit in either of them.

I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse or wind you up but I genuinely belive it does come down to a black and white choice eventually.

You have the choice to buy and you weigh up all the options about price, what you will get, how much money you have, etc, etc - this is the grey area you are talking about.

Once you have made your decision you buy it or you don't and this is the black and white I'm talking about. If you weighed up all the relevant factors and decided that buying the game wasn't worthwhile and still went ahead bought it then I just don't get it.

I was working on the simple assumption that anyone with a free choice that decided to buy the game did so because they decided it was worthwhile enough to buy - if that basic assumption was wrong then I apologise for whatever upset you received when I apparently told you how you felt as I didn't think anyone would feel the game was not worthwhile enough and still buy it. Sorry but that is just weird to me.

I don't see either the financial or development mode slipping - first expansion was expected about a year after launch and first expansion is coming out a year after launch. Both models appear to be pretty much on target based on everything FD have said so far.

 

[Dfox]

If the financial model wasn't slipping, the development model wouldn't be slipping. Quite simply put: Money=content=game. In that order.
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Because despite explaining my reasoning, and pointing out that this subject is not as black and white as you would so blithely like to believe, you chose to stick with your grossly simplified version that there are only two sides to the discussion and my explanation does not fit in either of them.

I don't understand why people fail to understand this. Game companies must make money in order to make content. That is, unless someone wants to go volunteer their time to get the content added for free.

 

[Cradle2Grave]

I don't understand why people fail to understand this. Game companies must make money in order to make content. That is, unless someone wants to go volunteer their time to get the content added for free.

This seems to be a concept that some people have trouble grasping.

 

[Sav112]

I feel it's over the top on the price. I've not even played my Copy of Elite since it landed in the store from the KS. So ive to pay another £30-40 when a new person to the game gets it all for £40. why does the new player get it for £40 because they would not pay £70-80 for the game but we who backed the game its ok.

Can you follow other players to the surface and fight or is this just your ship?

 

[Clawhammer]

I don't understand why people fail to understand this. Game companies must make money in order to make content. That is, unless someone wants to go volunteer their time to get the content added for free.

Right, compainies must make money, but the big question is HOW. Is this way good or not? I think that is somethink where we can talk about. I bet everyone here is clear that frontier needs money. But the HOW is important ;-)

 

[jabberwalkie]

I don't understand why people fail to understand this. Game companies must make money in order to make content. That is, unless someone wants to go volunteer their time to get the content added for free.

This seems to be a concept that some people have trouble grasping.

Not in the slightest. I think that most recognize that money is required in development. What people are taking issue with is the thinly veiled disguise at paying for another game while the original game hasn't quite delivered. And that new players will pretty much be getting a better deal that existing players.

 

[Kandarus]

Kickstarter was to get the game *started*. If FD need more money post release do what every other company does, go to the bank and get a loan. Milking current customers for production money based on promises as a normal business model is NOT the way to elicit trust.

When FD left the kickstarter money train and went commercial, that model of pay for promises went right along with it. You can't have it both ways FD.

 

[CrustyGoth]

If you don't know how to respond, perhaps you don't know the difference between a feature and content? Let me sum it up for you then. Planet landing is a feature that allows you to expand to new access new content. It is not new content in and of itself. Paying for a feature is essentially what we are being asked to do with Braben saying that this is what we could do essentially. If there is something to do once you get there, then that would be content.

Ok I didn't realise that you thought the planetary landing expansion just meant we could land on a planet and then only have the option to take off again. I'm of the opinion that there will actually be a few things to do once you land but I am only basing that on the fact that there actually will be.

I know you obviously think FD are a bit crap but come on - this argument is pointless enough without resorting to that.

 

[jabberwalkie]

Ok I didn't realise that you thought the planetary landing expansion just meant we could land on a planet and then only have the option to take off again. I'm of the opinion that there will actually be a few things to do once you land but I am only basing that on the promise that there actually will be.

FIFY

I know you obviously think FD are a bit crap but come on - this argument is pointless enough without resorting to that.

Not at all, I think they are visionaries. I just think that they don't know what to exactly do with the game beyond adding features.

 

[Dfox]

Not in the slightest. I think that most recognize that money is required in development. What people are taking issue with is the thinly veiled disguise at paying for another game while the original game hasn't quite delivered. And that new players will pretty much be getting a better deal that existing players.

None of that changes anything though with regards to the money equation. I see this come up a lot here, and with other games. the complaint usualy goes something like this "What? New DLC for the game even though x, y, and z haven't been fixed?" The problem with this line of thinking is that the person is still asking for something to be built for free. While it may be true that those x,y, and z were expected in the "base" game, you still have to pay for ongoing development or the game will cease to exist.

 

[SlickReed]

The price for horizons is at market value but imo, its below its worth. If you count inflation, all based games nowadays should cost $100. Inflation is the reason gaming has such a large DLC market. The developers have to make money. Do you think games is magically cheaper make now compared to 20 years ago?

 

[Haleks]

So if I understand this right, the lifetime expansion pass is the smarter (i.e. cheaper) choice:

- if you're not interested in Betas, and they release at least 4 seasons (3 after Horizons)

Actually no, the cheaper way is to wait 4 years, then you can have everything for 50 bucks.