Why is that? Afaik, "volunteer moderator" doesnt get any cash from Frontier. It only proves dedication that individual has towards the game. And obviously, someone with such dedication is more positive towards company.
How to make Elite Dangerous more profitable for Frontier so they can give us more stuff.
- Thread starter Eric Palmer
- Start date
Why is that? Afaik, "volunteer moderator" doesnt get any cash from Frontier. It only proves dedication that individual has towards the game. And obviously, someone with such dedication is more positive towards company.
Let's see the Kickstarter page, did that include ship interiors or ELWs to be delivered at launch?
Looks like this is the relevant part:
"The initial release of Elite: Dangerous doesn't mark the end of development. We intend to continue expanding the game both with new content and new features. A good example of this is planetary landings. We have an ambitious goal for landings to include new gameplay and a rich variety of worlds to explore. To achieve our goal we want the planets to come to life. We also want to add leaving the ships so you can explore space stations or board enemy vessels or even just to look around your own.
The main reason for treating these as expansions is so we can approach these with the proper development resources that we require to do them well. [...]"
That didn't promise neither for the initial release. Reading it again, it's mostly a promise that they intend to continue developing the game after launch, and that they did. Then it includes a bunch of goals that they might or might not do, not a specific promise that they are definitely going to do all that - but also that they'll come as paid extensions, not as part of the base game.
No, that's why I didn't say they'd be included at launch.
People already complain about pior performance os the game . If they try to BE cutting Edge you can say good bye to 60% of the player base
Ship interiors were never promised to be included in anything other than a later paid for expansion, and that expansion is/was not Odyssey.
I think Frontier would like to see ED blossoming but they also have to have it make a profit. It's not like they made $600m from selling pictures of ships to people.
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The best option is to purchase Arx and get paint jobs and ship kits etc..
You're not wrong but you're not right either, ultimately you're just missing the point as it's not as simple as you want to suggest.
The fact of the matter is that development costs can't be put off into the future as bills need paying now - as we are all well aware, so the investment to make any future expansion to happen has to be put up front.
I don't know how fungible the earnings are when it comes to Frontier's roster of games, and on paper it looks like they could fund another major expansion to Elite from their cash holdings, if you only looked at Elite being their only financial concern. But it's not.
Elite runs as a live service which means it needs to make money to pay for it to continue to run. AFAIK, Elite is making over that by a decent amount, and I'd suggest it's reasonable that Frontier will look at Elite's profits with a view to reinvesting it back into the game, which then strongly suggests that there is a direct relationship between how much money Elite brings in to the scope and pace of any future development for the game.
Maybe some banana juice or maybe some kumo burgers?
if fdev was interested in making more money with elite they have had many chances to do so. one can only assume those options don't mesh with whatever plan they have in place.
Imo if they want more regular cash from ED, they need to focus more on the multiplayer aspects. Make it easier to access and organise CQC (fighters, full ships, and on foot), SRV racing, ship racing (reusing the target circles from the tutorials).
Gather the people together, then sell them cosmetics so they will want to differentiate from each other.
Also make the on foot combat troop suits available for purchase, I want the Empire sniper suit
Gather the people together, then sell them cosmetics so they will want to differentiate from each other.
Also make the on foot combat troop suits available for purchase, I want the Empire sniper suit
Frontier have gone down the route that they feel is best . Whether it is the right or wrong direction ? Is a matter of opinion . Personally I had hoped the many years of nothing much, was Frontier rewriting the base code rather than what we have today . The game was never about making loads of cash it's a niche game with player numbers on average being stable over the years ( not including consoles) and it's fan base is fairly loyal .
As far as real-world adverts goes, the basic problem is going to be the usual problem with adverts - the advertisers' interests are completely opposed to everyone else's and the pricing reflects that:
1) Discreet in-game billboard ads replacing the existing ones; unlikely to cause many people to quit, but the price Frontier will get for showing a fuzzy blob at an off-angle for a few seconds as someone runs/boosts past it will be so tiny it probably won't in aggregate cover the expense of hiring a sponsorship expert to manage the ad contracts in the first place.
2) Unskippable video ads during every hyperspace jump and launch sequence; would get a substantial amount of short-term revenue but would also cause everyone to quit, reducing profitability substantially in the long run.
- they've strong cash reserves and reasonable profitability, so they don't need to raise more money through issuing further stock or taking out loans backed by the existing stock
- a substantial fraction of the stock is owned by David Braben or other "friendly" parties so there's no risk of a shareholder revolt causing problems (and most of the rest is held by your usual boring-by-design investment fund types who will just sell it if they think it's not a good long-term investment rather than causing trouble)
- this also makes a hostile takeover extremely difficult even if the share price drops further
- it means David Braben personally doesn't have quite as much nominal wealth as he previously had, but he still has enough that none of his family for several generations to come will need to work unless they want to
And if they were thinking in terms of increasing stock price; expected return on investment is going to be much higher for a new Planet Something game than it would be for more Elite Dangerous - cheaper to develop, faster income, much lower ongoing costs to support, and far less risk of an Odyssey-level loss.
1) Discreet in-game billboard ads replacing the existing ones; unlikely to cause many people to quit, but the price Frontier will get for showing a fuzzy blob at an off-angle for a few seconds as someone runs/boosts past it will be so tiny it probably won't in aggregate cover the expense of hiring a sponsorship expert to manage the ad contracts in the first place.
2) Unskippable video ads during every hyperspace jump and launch sequence; would get a substantial amount of short-term revenue but would also cause everyone to quit, reducing profitability substantially in the long run.
Unlikely - Frontier doesn't have any particular need for a high stock price.
- they've strong cash reserves and reasonable profitability, so they don't need to raise more money through issuing further stock or taking out loans backed by the existing stock
- a substantial fraction of the stock is owned by David Braben or other "friendly" parties so there's no risk of a shareholder revolt causing problems (and most of the rest is held by your usual boring-by-design investment fund types who will just sell it if they think it's not a good long-term investment rather than causing trouble)
- this also makes a hostile takeover extremely difficult even if the share price drops further
- it means David Braben personally doesn't have quite as much nominal wealth as he previously had, but he still has enough that none of his family for several generations to come will need to work unless they want to
And if they were thinking in terms of increasing stock price; expected return on investment is going to be much higher for a new Planet Something game than it would be for more Elite Dangerous - cheaper to develop, faster income, much lower ongoing costs to support, and far less risk of an Odyssey-level loss.
Some strange new usages of the words "promised" and "paid for stuff" of which I was not previously aware.
A Burger King / Delaine cross promotion would be delicious and filling, and / or the Alliance sponsoring kale.
Hey flip this around and start selling Karzuki Locusts IRL. $$CASH COW$$
Frontiers need to add some new content and just monetize it. For example, ship interiors where you could place a lot of beautiful ARX stuff.
Also, they already have animation menu so, they can add some new animations that you can get with ARX.
Also, they already have animation menu so, they can add some new animations that you can get with ARX.
Monetization won't do much without players just playing the game more. The best thing they could do for making more money is create better features that encourage long-term participation, like better powerplay and squadrons. That might get players buying more ARX purchases, not to mention making the game more appealing to more players and getting more purchases.