You paid for it as we all did.
It's just FD needed a year to implement proper features to the barebones state of the game.
I was pretty ignorant of the whole kickstarter thing for a long time, so I missed out on the earliest days of ED although I had played FFE and the interim X games. If I had known, I'd have bought an LEP to support the game since as of now I've bought about a hundred dollars worth of extras from the store anyways. I'd wager there's still a lot of interest in the game with many returning when the game gets new updates, along with new sales. A dead game would not have that much commentary on yt channels devoted to ED today still. I'm convinced now, Frontier has new "milestone" plans for ED post Beyond and hopefully a lot of the new examples of the cobra engine's capabilities seen in JWE and PC will make their way in some form into ED post-Beyond.
Since we seem to be resolving our views on frontiers future representation of elite, where we are now the only thing we really need to update and put away is the original roadmap that was public understanding for the first year of two after launch. There was a significant period of time where people had been told / defined / expected a whole bunch of things as a *given* to be coming to elite.. space legs, atmospheric planets, eva, gas giants possible some others. This was never ever contradicted by frontier, and possibly even originated from them.
The point is, while frontier have not publicly denied they will be implementing the larger ideas, they have neither delivered or retracted the claims within a reasonable timeframe (2 years). We have to change expectations on the original launch roadmap.. its simply false and something we shouldn't be holding onto. It may happen, but only as a pleasant surprise. Having said, if frontier continue to deliver anything of substance into the game i'm sure that will work for many people.
Also while im pretty happy with my recent purchases, one has to be a realist, and if you've been around for 7+ major patches, you simply cant be bursting in excitement anymore because you know how they all 100% turn out.
EDIT: Also people who are likely completely rational and upstanding actually released crime and punishment out to us players, which raises alarm bells of genuine disconnect somewhere.
The point is, while frontier have not publicly denied they will be implementing the larger ideas, they have neither delivered or retracted the claims within a reasonable timeframe (2 years). We have to change expectations on the original launch roadmap.. its simply false and something we shouldn't be holding onto. It may happen, but only as a pleasant surprise. Having said, if frontier continue to deliver anything of substance into the game i'm sure that will work for many people.
Also while im pretty happy with my recent purchases, one has to be a realist, and if you've been around for 7+ major patches, you simply cant be bursting in excitement anymore because you know how they all 100% turn out.
EDIT: Also people who are likely completely rational and upstanding actually released crime and punishment out to us players, which raises alarm bells of genuine disconnect somewhere.
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I don't disagree with your 'chill and see what happens' summary
Think you're a bit blurred on some of the public info though:
- The initial roadmap was essentially this. Legs and Atmos are absolutely the big pillar additions proposed by FDev, expected to come in stages in both cases.
- They have repeated their intent regarding both of those big main pillars many times. You can see the most recent quotes we have here: (see half way down).
- They never stated that they would deliver those additions on an annual basis. That was the playerbase's assumption when Horizons arrived after a year and had what looked like a quarterly roadmap (before they hit apparent problems and lengthened it significantly).
Honestly, it's all about personal hype management
. This is where I'm at:- Q4 will be better than previous Horizons deliveries, as they've given themselves more time.
- That doesn't mean I'm crazy hyped. Just interested to see how much content we get, and if it works coherently together.
- The 'major milestone' DLC will definitely bring another step on for the big pillars. Legs/Atmos tech in some form or other. (More info here).
- I don't expect a 'whole new game', but I do expect something technically proficient. And potentially more filled out than Horizon's 2.0 on the gameplay content front.
The rationale is pretty clear there, it's just a bad rationale
. IE they're petrified of the 'griefer' dynamic, and let that dominate the delivered product. Totally agree it's a missed beat again, and didn't really make C&P into a fun thing at all, if anything making it worse for the average player.On the plus side though, I'd also note that it came as part of the tail end of the Season delivery system in many ways. Q1 appears to have been their 'what can we turnaround in a shortish period' update, prior to the big Q4 run.
I do expect them to make such misjudgements again. For sure
. But I do think more long dev runs will mean less rushed, cobbled-together, 'quick fix' additions on balance. (A longer run could have had time to add more game mechanics beyond the basic prison ship system. Something like the tracker limpets for bounty hunting & galactic bounties they've mentioned, and more. Stuff that would at least lead to gameplay positives etc).![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
It would mess with Open significantly. Like mess it up. In GTA Online what you got was guys in ludicrous armoured vehicles spamming expensive, deadly sticky bombs. Nigh all the races were set to 'custom cars on' and won by the most expensive vehicles & pimpings. It makes for a sour experience for anyone who wants to earn the win, not pay more to get it.
Engineering adds a 'time to reward' buffer, but you'd still see swarms of 'Harmless' Annies pumping out torpedos and suiciding into you because the cost penalty means zip. Pay2Win rarely makes for a fun gameplay dynamic for the average online punter
this is all very true and my bias as someone who is not competitive in PvP and has given up on open is clear.
sadly it seems we cant have cake and eat it, and it appears FD need to make extra money on top of game sales to keep them happy with the earnings. The way it is now means there is no fun ingame in collecting skins, kits and bobble heads and this makes me sad. i have bought a few skins but i personally have no bond with them, skins for me are less about the skins theselves but as a reminder to how i got the skins if that makes sense, and all of that is lost with the cash shop.
now maybe this is again just me, but it doesnt work the other way for me....... being able to buy "stuff" out of game does not reduce my personal satisfaction of getting the stuff in game at all..... so long as the stuff IS earnable in game and isnt "golden ammo" and limited edition ships that cant be gotten in game then if someone with more money than me wants to buy all the things then i would let them, knowing that they are acting as a whale and supporting the game.
but doing that, i cant think of any worse way to kill the game for me. My KSer pledge allowed me to start with a specced out cobra and some money..... but to have done that would have ripped out the 1st 100 hrs of my game, and to me these were the most fun hrs i have ever had and likley will ever have in ED.
but yeah.... if you enjoy competetive pvp then i can see why my issues mean nothing to you and at the same time why the things which are unimportant to me are show stoppers.
if there is any defence at all for me still having my view it is probably that ... my gameplay has already been massively compromised by making ED some sort of competitive MP game. this is why we have no persistence, no time compression to see beautiful things, and also have to have instant respawn etc, so if a little bit of P2W means i can claw back some of the missing gmaeplay i expected like earning everything that is currently locked in the store by in game activities then..... maybe that is a fair price
i wonder what percentage of the playerbase are LEPpers? i suppose there is a larger percentage of us on these forums than average.
This probably comes as a shock but, Horizons != Beyond.
True, most of the Beyond series of updates is tied into the base game & could not have been charged extra for while allowing those that did not buy it to continue to play. It has been a year of consolidation, and for the most part a successful one. Not premium content delivered free of charge.
I am really interested in Q4 and think (from what i have seen so far) FD have done a good job... however that is a stretch imo......... it is only not horizons in name only. this was added for free because (iirc by their own admission) FD did not deliver the goods with horizons.
hell even now we are lacking features specifically advertised for horizons - multicrew with SRV, different types of SRV and landing on volcanic worlds was meant to be a landable set of planets coming later in horizons season for free.
i am not having a go at FD (much) but i think you are kind of making out Beyond is something it isnt really.
I dunno............ There is not that much complaining going on in this thread imo, but I must admit the game has not developed as much as i expected it to in the time limit which it has been out. and my gut feeling is even the developers are dissapointed at the pace of things, hence not charging for "beyond" All updates are free for me, well not really, because i have paid for all of them.......... but I was expecting to be on "paid" expansion 3 and looking forward to number 4 by this point, not still on paid expansion #1... but that said I am not throwing any toys out of the pram over it.
![[VR] Frank_G](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/59/59394.jpg?1553527111){kind=avatar}
As an LEP owner, i payed for most parts of upgrades and things to come.
And good i did so, as i really like to show my support to this awesome game and to see it evolve over time.
And good i did so, as i really like to show my support to this awesome game and to see it evolve over time.
To say thankyou, why not buy some junk from the ship dolly dress up store like the rest of us? It isn't cheap, you can easily spend up to the full price of horizons before filling up your cart. Easy to give back your pound of flesh dont worry
...
I can't get myself to buy ship-kits when I can't even admire my ship in the hangar in a proper, natural way (the camera is extremely clumsy!)
So when do we get the rest of Horizons? Surely the price for Horizons is worth more than:
* 1 single un-customizable SRV
* Crew members that are not on ship and generally handicapped (can't pilot ship unless I'm in SLF)
* Rather boring planets with not much going on.
* Skimmer missions removed/bugged (skimmers not showing wanted status / faction since 3.0)
* 1 variant of SLF (fighter SLF that cannot land/mine/deliver cargo/data)
* Engineers - well they eventually made them more playable in Beyond Ch 1
Don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate FD paying a team of 100+ to develop Beyond without asking for money, but I wish they fixed the Horizons bugs too and removed some of the artificial fun blockers in the game.
On Cosmetics:
I'm totally with you that more in-game earning of cosmetics would be great. The CG decals etc were a neat little step in that direction. Would love for FDev to feel secure enough in their revenue streams to have things like Faction & Rank skins, Minor Faction skins if you hit Allied status, mini ship kit sections if you hit full trust with Engineers, stuff like that
On P2W Impacts on Open:
I rarely play Open as it goes, let alone PvP. But it's part of the game that isn't going away, and I think trashing its gameplay would be daft.
P2W would also happen to mess up some aspects of Open that I do appreciate as more of a Solo / Co-Op guy. IE the eccentric mix of craft (from the tootling noob in a Hauler to nosey Orca doing pirouettes to the gang of overcharged gank-beasts) for a start. There's a certain 'organic' mix still when I drop in, sparse as it generally is. I'm actively cool with there being sharks out there who I've no chance of matching, but it's counter-balanced by the fact that they're not ever-present. They're that rare threat that haunts the reef. (Plus most everyone acts within certain fitting parameters - acting with self preservation in mind being the main one, from loadouts to... well, to not suicide-smacking you in the face with 20 million's worth of rebuy, because that would be dumb
)Open's here to stay, and I'd rather it preserve its best aspects, and its potential to improve
. (If ED actually stays the course, and lasts say 5+ more years, then that might actually bring more revenue, and dev, overall too. As opposed to torching it briefly on the P2W money pyre )
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A great reply.
Yeah looking at that old newsletter, everything apart from the schedule seemed intact. Making the assumption of no refactoring year for elite was easy to do.. the season that was sold was based on a finite time period, and given seasons was paid, youd assume frontier would want to get paid again, and would have to come up with another offering to justify us doing so.
I kinda like the seasons model to be honest. The last data i have for this is my epic immense relief and validation of NOT buying jwe. Yes this could have been my dream game, but it was released exactly like elite, a high quality yet super thin function, great graphics and sound but core game systems simply not in the game. I think larger big bang releases and frontier don't work. They don't culturally make witchers or RDR's.. As players imo we're better off letting them do what they do at their glacial pace and give us what they have when they're ready.
Also, im pretty glad i didn't join in the beta. Graphics are kinda the reason i still play games, especially in elite, and i don't think i would have accepted a downgrade once having seen running like it did then. Too much of a stab i wouldn't have survived it
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Well open changed for the base game players after engineers were put in place so that could be called p2w as there is no way to get them without paying. Imo player splitting dlc is bad for games can't even do all the space multiplayer things with 2 versions playing in the same world with multi crew as half the people i know wont buy dlc.On Cosmetics:
I'm totally with you that more in-game earning of cosmetics would be great. The CG decals etc were a neat little step in that direction. Would love for FDev to feel secure enough in their revenue streams to have things like Faction & Rank skins, Minor Faction skins if you hit Allied status, mini ship kit sections if you hit full trust with Engineers, stuff like that
On P2W Impacts on Open:
I rarely play Open as it goes, let alone PvP. But it's part of the game that isn't going away, and I think trashing its gameplay would be daft.
P2W would also happen to mess up some aspects of Open that I do appreciate as more of a Solo / Co-Op guy. IE the eccentric mix of craft (from the tootling noob in a Hauler to nosey Orca doing pirouettes to the gang of overcharged gank-beasts) for a start. There's a certain 'organic' mix still when I drop in, sparse as it generally is. I'm actively cool with there being sharks out there who I've no chance of matching, but it's counter-balanced by the fact that they're not ever-present. They're that rare threat that haunts the reef. (Plus most everyone acts within certain fitting parameters - acting with self preservation in mind being the main one, from loadouts to... well, to not suicide-smacking you in the face with 20 million's worth of rebuy, because that would be dumb
Open's here to stay, and I'd rather it preserve its best aspects, and its potential to improve
Cheers
EDIT: Sorry, giant response incoming
That's the thing though. ED's launch was super thin in part because of the Season approach. 'Fill it in later' they said having hit their cut off. That's shonky enough when laggardly adding things like an actual party system for a purported MMO. But their apparent desire to make each quarterly a shiny addition in its own right led them to further half-jobs like Powerplay, and the spangly CQC (which I absolutely love, but in retrospect they should have spent that year going just Core Core Core...).
The first year I kinda forgive as Seasonal though, because they were transitioning to a new business model, and they threw the dice on a first launch that's a risky niche (that we all happen to like it seems
). I didn't mind them being conservative in that sense. Horizons just compounded all the issues though. They got stuck in an announced roadmap that clearly had issues, left themselves no flexibility, and tried to do too much win-win framework building. (Multicrew is the classic - everyone got way over excited about what it would deliver, when in reality half of it was just tech work for Legs. The payoff comes way down the line there...) It's also just a really poor proposition for us as consumers. 'Pay AAA game prices, get game in disjointed drabs over multiple years...'
I'm glad they've been able to shake things up finally. If they were to alternate core and DLC additions from now on, with a long lead time (and just ship / narrative / bonus style quartely updates along the way) that gives them a lot more flexibility behind the scenes, and a lot better chance of dropping cohesive updates that are genuinely hype-worthy
(It's interesting to see things in 3.3 like the broad use of the new scanning system. IE it's both for Explo and the new signal sources. And supposedly they've done similar crossover with the 'Analytic View' being useful for multiple disciplines, including the Mining addition. That kind of cohesiveness is easier when you're doing a big job lot of additions).
Anyways yeah, I think Seasons have been pretty terrible in total
. Games As A Service ain't always easy though (especially when you're chasing a roadmap that 500 devs would struggle to fulfil on in a glossy way ). Hopefully they're at least getting the beats of it now Yep I absolutely agree that Horizons is P2W.
I think there are some distinctions from a straight credit purchase variant though. The actual Engineering process being time locked stops the 'generic OP newbie' issue from being a thing, which is major. (Whereas GTA ended up taking rank locks off stuff like tanks and rocket helis, because that's the stuff Shark card guys want to insta-buy... The cred-purchasing model will do that to a game
)Splitting the playerbase isn't ideal I agree, but they don't have that many options on the table it seems. Core game purchases naturally tail off, and sci fi space sims are kinda niche to start with. If they want to do the crazy stuff they need a cash injection somehow, and big paid content has to be gated ultimately. (On the plus side, if they end up combining ED & Horizons when the new DLC launches, which seems possible, that would lessen some of the issues. Everyone gets Engineering... and to get annoyed at whatever the new paywalled stuff is
)