Backer (and Other Long-Term Player) Bickering about "Value"
PREFACE: I travel quite a bit due to work (have for most of the last 15 years), and try to do stairs and inclines mid-day when at work, so LAVE Radio is a great listen while I'm doing either. I usually don't post on the forum much at all, but I want to on this, one topic that is coming up regularly in the show.
The last few LAVE Radio episodes have noted the regular comments about people on the Forum, especially early and original "Backers," and other, long-term players, bickering about the game, it's evolution, it's rate of development, etc..., especially for all that 'upfront funding' and resulting 'ROI' ... that 'value' they don't feel they're getting.
So I just want to add my $0.02 on this ...
Take any on-line MMORPG, short of Guild Wars or a few others, including ones like Eve on-line, and you're playing US$10, 15 even US$20/month. That's easily >US$100/year. Sure, there are options in-game to cut costs, like in Eve, to 'pay' in-game money for your monthly fees, but ... ED literally doesn't play that at all. It doesn't put you in that position. It doesn't change gameplay with money, it doesn't charge you every month, it makes extra money with customizations that are non-gameplay impacting.
Again, just over 2+ years, with any other MMORPG, that would be a minimum of US$250 ... easily!!!
Now I fully admit I didn't come into ED until April 2015. Being in the US, and only a casual gamer, I was wholly ignorant of the Kickstarter. I missed out on the early options, even though I had played Frontier II and even First Encounters. In fact, I only found out about it because I saw it on-sale on Steam. So I've only spent US$80 on the game itself, putting aside the added US$50-75 on paintjobs and non-gameplay items (plus my wife has spent another US$100 at the Frontier Store on things not in-game for me for birthdays and Christmas). I really have only spent US$80 on the gameplay, nothing else required.
I know some people put 2-3x as much up than I, so I'm not trying to speak for them. But at the same time ... I still don't understand it.
So what is it that is causing people to complain about ... "Value"?
From my vantage point, I'm still playing a game that I paid a whole US$80 for, let alone I would have likely backed for US$200+ had I known about it before 2015! So ... what gives? Really, I don't understand it. Can someone explain it to me? I buy some add-ons from Frontier and ... I feel really good about it! I really do! Especially since I bought my game from Steam first, so there was that amount that was 'cut out' of Frontier's profit, that I didn't realize about until later as well. And that's not even my 'real cost.'
While I still haven't upgraded my base Ivy Bridge system (Mini-ITX so limited form-factor, with a i7-4790K, 16GiB RAM, SSD + 9TiB usable RAID-5), I did add an Oculus Rift CV1 for US$600, and upgraded my GTX 970 to a US$500 980 Ti and eventually a US$500 GTX 1080, as well as a Saitek X-55. So I've dropped a lot of money into things just to play, largely, one, single game. But it's so worth the experience! I have a real, true, AAA-rated VR game.
The game it cost me US$80, and I've gotten nearly 600 hours out of it ... me, a 'casual gamer' who rarely spent more than 8-10 hours/month, on average, gaming ... in 2 years. I would be so impressed as even an original backer who spent US$200+!!! I guess that's why I kept spending a few bucks here, a few buck there, to buy in-game additives that are, essentially, non-game impacting.
Latest case-in-point: In my view, the whole, alleged 'charging for ship ID/name issue' was just argumentative non-sense in the end, for what Frontier actually did do, and a 'wake up call' in how petty consumers we can be.
A few bucks/quid to actually see it in external views, just like anything else aesthetic. They did it right. Why can't we trust Frontier to do their best and keep us in mind? They aren't trying to 'squeeze out a few more bucks out of us.' They really have our best interests in mind! Why can't people see that? Are we really at the point we're making those arguments?
Sorry ... just wanted to get that off my chest, instead of playing tonight. Appreciate anyone who read it and also agrees. If not, feel free to post, I'll try to read and consider it, although I probably won't respond.
DISCLAIMER: For most of the last dozen years, I've worked at or in large, Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) entities or divisions, as well as contributed (even if only a small value in patches and documentation) to hundreds of software projects, so my views may be skewed from others by my understanding of what it takes to maintain a codebase and, more importantly, community.
