Isn't it about time FD stopped selling a non Horizons based Elite and merge the content?
- Thread starter Miko
- Start date
LOL. He'd rather beat his gums on the forum.
They will either drop MacOS (sorry guys, meanwhile no Linux port either), or (possibly) port using Metal 2. They will certainly won't leave status quo for very long.
I am afraid that will change as we know they plan to drop DirectX 10 and most likely will make CPU four cores hard requirement.
Things will change. Basically FD wants to get max player numbers to Horizons before making Horizons base game after Beyond. But not now.
Why would or should they shut down that source of revenue ?
"Horizons" still sells.
And if "Beyond" turns out to be successful in bringing more players back, "Horizons" may become attractive to those who haven't played in month' and years, and who still only have the base game.
I see no need for such a step, both seem to run alongside well enough.
Yes, without Horizons you'll be buggered in PvP, but not everybody PvPs, and for them there is no inherent requirement to have Horizons.
Can't rule it out entirely, but i doubt FD will ever do such a merge, unless Horizon sales drop to almost zero.
"Horizons" still sells.
And if "Beyond" turns out to be successful in bringing more players back, "Horizons" may become attractive to those who haven't played in month' and years, and who still only have the base game.
I see no need for such a step, both seem to run alongside well enough.
Yes, without Horizons you'll be buggered in PvP, but not everybody PvPs, and for them there is no inherent requirement to have Horizons.
Can't rule it out entirely, but i doubt FD will ever do such a merge, unless Horizon sales drop to almost zero.
Beyond is officially labeled "Season 3" as of the announcement for the beta.
They kinda already did. Season 3.0, Beyond, is free to Horizons owners in its entirety.
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They will more likely merge because of technical reasons before sales reasons.
There's good reason why marketing pushes Commander Deluxe edition for 20€ these days. Which means both parts.
Always been my fear about Frontier's decision to sell the game piecemeal, and for the most part my fears remain as a good number of features Frontier has released so far are basically self-contained and optional.
I too hope Frontier ends up merging the versions over time. Of course it does mean some people will rather wait to get it for free, but that should be an incentive for Frontier to release expansions in one go in a polished state to encourage early adoption. These days a game releasing on Steam will sell virtually for free within a year or two, that hasn't killed day-one purchases.
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The base game goes on sale for so often at such a low price that I think in a way it has kind of become a "Demo" of the game for people who are unsure if they want to get into it or not. I don't know if that's Frontier's intentional strategy or not, but it seems like that's the role it plays at this point, and it's probably still a good thing to have both versions out there.
I find that it is superb. Not too sure why you are having issues with it.
Give me an engineer-free vanilla version and I'll downgrade to that.
It's way overly complicated. Just about every other game out there knows how to do a 3rd person camera but not FDev. Even FE2 had better exterior views. For example, as soon as I go into exterior camera, the mouse should automatically take over zooming and panning with a simple switch to a free camera.
I think the only reason they haven't 'Retired' the space only version is because of the Mac version. Those poor sods are stuck at that level because Apple doesn't support the tech that horizons needs.
However to me, it does feel we've got to the stage in the game's life cycle is that the base entry for new players should be Elite+Horizons and we only have the horizon's upgrade available to existing space only players.
I would say that the external camera is a complete pain to use out of the box. However, once you've played around with the camera control settings, it can be quite an effective filming tool.
However to me, it does feel we've got to the stage in the game's life cycle is that the base entry for new players should be Elite+Horizons and we only have the horizon's upgrade available to existing space only players.
I would say that the external camera is a complete pain to use out of the box. However, once you've played around with the camera control settings, it can be quite an effective filming tool.
thank you for your sympathy.
The OP idea is great. The fact that some people don't understand the motivation for this is because either they compare ED with other games + their DLCs or because they don't care for the future of this game.
First of all, if Horizon would contain only planetary landings, and next paid season just atmospheric landings, I agree that things are clear and we can treat them as normal DLCs for ever. But the fact is that there are a lot of features already Horizon only, that I have to scratch my head for a few minutes to realize what feature is base and what is Horizon. Horizon is build on top of the base game so, when the next paid content will come (hopefully it will come) it will be on top of Horizon, or on top of the base game? Will we have the posibility to buy base + next DLC skipping Horizon? Will the new DLC contain also Horizon? Have you ever thought about the implications?
This is not Battlefield, with 4 DLCs and with a new game replacing the current one after 2 years. We are playing ED for 4 years now (myself for only 3 + something) and we want another 4 maybe, but with new content, essential to the game IMHO (atmospheric landings for sure). As a general rule for DLCs: playerbase fragmentation is BAD. Let's say 2 millions bought the base game, 1 million bought Horizon; how many do you think will buy the next DLC? 500.000? Even less, maybe. So this gives Frontier les and less incentives to develop the game further down the road, especially doing "hard stuff" like atmo or legs, or something even crazier...
So we need to establish a new baseline: IMHO Frontier already did a mistake by launching on PS4 the base game, instead of a single package with Horizon. This should be the only SKU sold now and current base player should be, by all means, determined to buy Horizon. And yes, there will be a point when everybody should have Horizon, Beyond, etc. even for free, if Frontier wants to sell a new major update with commercial success.
They definitely understand what's at stake here, the proof is Beyond, this is either the swan song for this game and nothing else will come after, or a foundation to build upon and convice us that this game still has a future.
TL,DR, I know... In the end, the only advice I could give to a base game player is: buy Horizon if you still want to play this game. You're missing a lot, anyway, without it, and you will miss even more when you won't be able to play anything ED when the servers will stop.
First of all, if Horizon would contain only planetary landings, and next paid season just atmospheric landings, I agree that things are clear and we can treat them as normal DLCs for ever. But the fact is that there are a lot of features already Horizon only, that I have to scratch my head for a few minutes to realize what feature is base and what is Horizon. Horizon is build on top of the base game so, when the next paid content will come (hopefully it will come) it will be on top of Horizon, or on top of the base game? Will we have the posibility to buy base + next DLC skipping Horizon? Will the new DLC contain also Horizon? Have you ever thought about the implications?
This is not Battlefield, with 4 DLCs and with a new game replacing the current one after 2 years. We are playing ED for 4 years now (myself for only 3 + something) and we want another 4 maybe, but with new content, essential to the game IMHO (atmospheric landings for sure). As a general rule for DLCs: playerbase fragmentation is BAD. Let's say 2 millions bought the base game, 1 million bought Horizon; how many do you think will buy the next DLC? 500.000? Even less, maybe. So this gives Frontier les and less incentives to develop the game further down the road, especially doing "hard stuff" like atmo or legs, or something even crazier...
So we need to establish a new baseline: IMHO Frontier already did a mistake by launching on PS4 the base game, instead of a single package with Horizon. This should be the only SKU sold now and current base player should be, by all means, determined to buy Horizon. And yes, there will be a point when everybody should have Horizon, Beyond, etc. even for free, if Frontier wants to sell a new major update with commercial success.
They definitely understand what's at stake here, the proof is Beyond, this is either the swan song for this game and nothing else will come after, or a foundation to build upon and convice us that this game still has a future.
TL,DR, I know... In the end, the only advice I could give to a base game player is: buy Horizon if you still want to play this game. You're missing a lot, anyway, without it, and you will miss even more when you won't be able to play anything ED when the servers will stop.
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Isn't the fact that Mac users can only run the base game a valid reason for keeping it available?
They'd have to be very substantial technical reasons then, if they can validate saying goodbye to revenue from 2 years worth of development costs. Of a product that has only seen it's "conclusion" (2.4) very recently.
Add to this that many of Beyond's planned features will already be covered under Horizons, and you've given up on the revenue of another year's worth of development cost.
I'm not much into the technical side of things, but common sense would have me think that this is first and foremost a pretty clear cut economical question.
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Apple supports Metal 2 now, which has proper compute shaders as ED requires.
Issue is that is another engine rewrite for them. However if FD believes it is worth it - t.i. they will port their other games to MacOS and iPad - they will do it.
You make a good point. I too hope the parts of Elite are fused again.
What is often missed in this discussion is the role Frontier's decision to drop Mac development played in separating the "base" from "horizon" versions. Here is what we think happened. We won't know for certain until someone's NDA runs out, and there is a story like those about botched development in CCP around EVE/Dust/World of Darkness. But our understanding to date may help this conversation.
In the beginning, the base game was the full game. Sometime before the release of the horizons update, however, Frontier decided to drop the Mac client. Having collected millions from Mac and Windows backers and customers, and promising to continue development for the mac and windows in tandem, this decision put Frontier between a rock and hard place. So Frontier falsely claimed Metal (1) did not do compute shading, said they would support the Mac when it did (a contradiction), stonewalled the mac community for information or explanation, designed Mac out of all but maintenance releases, and recently shifted its promise to "consider" supporting a Mac client.
This perspective might be controversial in this forum because you haven't had the facts. If you read through what the Mac community has discovered, you'd gain a different insight into the issue. You can start with this thread wherein I provide a timeline. Extensive discussion of this issue on that forum if you look around. Probably a bit much for most, and I can't blame you.
And thus the update to Elite was split out into two forks -- base game and Horizons. The base game was intended or served the purpose of maintaining a veneer of commitment to the mac. Whether this was its sole, primary, or additional purpose is not known. Doing so did provide arguable legal indemnification from violations of consumer protection (e.g., bait and switch) regulations and other laws that may apply. Horizons became the true next step in Elite.
Several caveats. No, this has nothing to do with windows or mac fanboys. Most of us run both MacOS and Windows and have access to Horizons. No, the community did not expect an immediate release of a Mac client in Metal. We wanted communication and transparency, understanding that not only does a port take time, but ports to consoles were in process. Yes, the community was very supportive of Frontier. Now, not so much. Most of us have moved onto Window via bootcamp, windows boxes, or cloud game.
The Mac client being dead, this reason and perhaps the main reason for splitting Elite into base and horizons has been removed.
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I'm not saying to "terminate" them now, just not to sell for PC and consoles the base game alone. And if the Mac users are as many as the 32bit players were... [yesnod]