Money, Development, and Future Features

[ch816772]

Posted to reddit/r/EliteDangerous, hoping to get more responses here.

I wanted to pose a question to the community, what do you expect post release of version 1.0?
I have been lurking on the elite reddit and official forums and notice a common sentiment in many of the posts about where the player base sees the games completeness. I think my views were best summed up by the linked post "rose tinted glasses (forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=85805&highlight=rose+tinted+glasses[2] ).
I'm a business person not a game dev, but both world are ruled by money (love it or hate it). Regardless of what you think of ED (I personally love it) I think its fair to say we all are hoping more features/fixes are implemented and the sooner the better. So here is my question. Who is paying for the development now?
Kickstarter is a great tool for getting large projects some upfront capital. Regardless of your view on the current completeness of ED, releasing version 1.0 means one thing for sure. That is, Frontier is saying it has met all obligations of its SOFT contract in the kick starter fund raiser. This includes a budget for ongoing tech support, servers, bug crushing, and future feature development.
Other titles, especially in the MMO genre, have a subscription service which provides them with a continuous stream of income for these post-release expenses. So where will Frontier get this money from? Developers need to be paid and its hard to justify spending money on a title that have been fully released to share holders (Frontier is publicly traded now).
I would suggest to the community a hard decision is at our feet. Do you encourage Frontier to elicit more funds from its costumers through expansions (read subscriptions), OR do you accept what is delivered and limit your costs. Also tied to this are expectations, do you feel like Frontier delivered the goods as advertised and should you invest more for a better experience?
I for one am happy to pay subscriptions fees if they lead to continuously developed content which meet the standards set by other MMO's, but I am only one.
TL;DR - ED has more work to be done post release, who is going to pay for this work and would you consider a subscription service?

 

[ch816772]

Such a noob, sorry for the formatting, I swear preview post looked different.


I wanted to pose a question to the community, what do you expect post release of version 1.0?
I have been lurking on the elite reddit and official forums and notice a common sentiment in many of the posts about where the player base sees the games completeness. I think my views were best summed up by the linked post "rose tinted glasses (forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=85805&highlight=rose+tinted+glass es[2] ).
I'm a business person not a game dev, but both world are ruled by money (love it or hate it). Regardless of what you think of ED (I personally love it) I think its fair to say we all are hoping more features/fixes are implemented and the sooner the better. So here is my question. Who is paying for the development now?
Kickstarter is a great tool for getting large projects some upfront capital. Regardless of your view on the current completeness of ED, releasing version 1.0 means one thing for sure. That is, Frontier is saying it has met all obligations of its SOFT contract in the kick starter fund raiser. This includes a budget for ongoing tech support, servers, bug crushing, and future feature development.
Other titles, especially in the MMO genre, have a subscription service which provides them with a continuous stream of income for these post-release expenses. So where will Frontier get this money from? Developers need to be paid and its hard to justify spending money on a title that have been fully released to share holders (Frontier is publicly traded now).
I would suggest to the community a hard decision is at our feet. Do you encourage Frontier to elicit more funds from its costumers through expansions (read subscriptions), OR do you accept what is delivered and limit your costs. Also tied to this are expectations, do you feel like Frontier delivered the goods as advertised and should you invest more for a better experience?
I for one am happy to pay subscriptions fees if they lead to continuously developed content which meet the standards set by other MMO's, but I am only one.
TL;DR - ED has more work to be done post release, who is going to pay for this work and would you consider a subscription service?

 

[Macgyver]

ED should have implemented community mods, then the testers ( I mean players ) probably could have already fixed much of what is wrong with ED.

Does the current ED budget cover the fixes required?
I am thinking only if they can attract more customers and at the moment I would suspect that customer base has already capped.

ED need to act fast, it seems the trading patch has made the game more enjoyable, and this is a great start.
ED need to act very quickly fix the MMO player co op mechanics.
How much more excellent would this game be if you could wingman up, or join a trade convoy for a guild with other players protecting you, all the while chatting live on open mikes....fun times.

this is why I troll the forums, I know the game could be 1000 times better than the skeleton it currently is. The game I was believed to be buying with my money, where is that game. Age of Conan flashback anyone?

For the future I expect, better MMO player co op mechanics, some kind of storyline missions with scaled difficulty for number in group or combat ranking total.

Currently it's very playable and the latest patch is a huge step in the right direction.
I am reluctant to play solo mode, but my experience in multi player was a bad one so not willing to gamble my ship again.

Good luck for the future, I just hope they keep the player base to generate enough money to keep the content coming.

 

[Sargon]

ED should have implemented community mods,

I definitely agree... games that have an open ended structure tend to outlive and outlast the ones that don't allow MODing.
But having taken out the Single Player version totally killed that idea, regrettably.

One simply can't compare whatever a single company can create with limited staff and limited budgets and creativity with what the entire globe of users, fans of a game, can come up with via MODs

But, what can we do... oh well..

 

[OnePercent]

Braben wants his game to appeal to the young teenagers just like all the other elites did, thus I don't think subscription would be deemed appropriate considering the unemployment of youth which is the sort of audience Elite is aiming for, Hate it or not the matter of fact is all the 40 year olds who play this were 12 when they played Elite anyway..

Continuous source of income should be all cosmetic and non pay to win, paid expansions are also welcome. You can ask your parents more easily to buy you the expansion, you can't ask them to pay for your subscription.

 

[WalterHWhite]

The 'common theme' I notice with these threads is that the game is a week old, and already there is talk of what "must" be done.

OK, there were beta testers, they peaked at their presents before Christmas day... so some of the excitement of a new game is gone for them.

Other than that, the game is a week old. It's now rolled out to the public and there's other things going on aside from the rollout of new content. Right now the dev team are probably more interested in balancing, problems for newbies, hardware performing as expected, etc etc.

I imagine the game development in the short term is funded by all the purchases after the release date. Quickstarter wasn't the be all and end all.

 

[ollobrains]

the amount of active players being advertised by frontier would be good, the servers are almost as active as eve onlne. I think once the new year rolls around development will push on, an advertising campaign, more youtube coverage, and a steam listing are all a good way to get the game out there. Maybe if sales ramp up a reduced price, and without a subscription service or charge then paid expansions every 6 months. But at a reasonable price.

 

[ch816772]

The 'common theme' I notice with these threads is that the game is a week old

It is NOT a week old, the full release IS a week old. And many people including myself now wonder what the development will be like since Alpha and Beta are over. It is unreasonable to expect the same progress after release as we saw before.

 

[WalterHWhite]

'Full release', 'ready for market', either or. I don't get your point.

Being part of the alpha/beta and being disappointed you're not immersed with entirely new facets of the game on the release date is entirely reasonable.

 

[Jason S]

Absolutely no to subscription fees for me, unless they were very cheap fees.

If that came in I would do something else with my spare time and wait for limit theory or star citizen.

I love ED, but I will not pay a subscription for any game unless it was less than two or three great British pound per month. Basically I will not pay the price of the game each and every year, which at a 5 to 10 pounds or more for each monthly subscription would be too much.

 

[TUXER]

It is NOT a week old, the full release IS a week old. And many people including myself now wonder what the development will be like since Alpha and Beta are over. It is unreasonable to expect the same progress after release as we saw before.

so when a non-KS game gets released is it 4 years old before players start to even play it?

 

[Ogidch]

I don't think this is all they will deliver for v1.0, tweaks can and will be done, how big those tweaks are is another matter. They are already working on the wings aspect from my understanding, and will improve or overhaul the in game communication with that, the Thargoids need to make an appearance presumably or were they not part of the kickstarter!

They have margins obviously and investors who can hopefully see the potential, if certain aspects are not polished and implemented then future expansion sales will certainly be affected. So from a business point of view there are certain expectations that need to be reached, not sure how many alpha and beta backers there were and what percentage of them make up the total players? If Alpha backers and some beta backers get free access to expansions, then from a sales model new players are key to future expansion packs and content.

It's very hard to judge from this forum what the balance of the community is and indeed how many people actually play the game. You get the diehard fans who look at the world through rose tinted glasses, and then the completely negative posts. I was not a backer but did pre-order the Mercenary pack about 2-3 months before release, there have been times when I have found the game very frustrating (stuck in a que at an outpost etc) and also times thinking this is excellently done. Overall I think it is a good game and been quite addicted over the past 10 days.

There are definitely areas for improvement and as long as those are implemented and do not form part of an paid for extension, then I would happily pay for planetary landings and other goodies as part of any paid for expansions. If not then I doubt I will invest further.

I think the development team would be best to clear any questions and speculation with a statement in the new year, not necessarily a road map or time line. Just say right we are going to do this and working on tweaking this etc, and that will complete the release.

 

[Zing Freelancer]

I don't believe that I will be playing ED in the next couple of month. I will at some point in time come back to check if something new been added.

 

[nats]

I have absolutely no idea what Frontier's plans are for ED now, other than they will pretty much have to get the rest of the ships out and start on the expansions. The game is basic of that there is no doubt, it needs another years work on the features it has. I know I was a bit shocked at how little they released the game with and how much remains unfinished considering their intimations over the last two years on how good this game would be. I guess there will be some sworried people in Frontier reading this stuff as well. It can only go two ways really:

- They work like hell get the game up to scratch and produce expansions and ships for purchase efficiently at the same time and make this into a going concern and do not rest until this is the best multiplayer/space game experience out there.

- They slow down, move most of the team off and the rest that are left start work on expansions and some extra content.

A few months ago I would undoubtedly pick the former if I was asked back then. Now I am very uncertain. I feel some of the things Frontier have done recently are very strange. I thought their inaction in the Kickstarter was a one off mistake. Now I am not at all certain that it was. Certainly the release of the game was absolute pants I felt, a right damp squib. And the much vaunted dynamic galaxy is so far proving to be just a load of random unrelated storylines which leave me cold. So how it goes from now is anyone's guess.