Obsidian Ant video - ARX: Thoughts On The New Currency And What It Means

Just to Godwin the thread...

There aren't many negative comments about Hitler on neo-nazi websites, but that doesn't mean opinion is universally favorable.

People gravitate towards fora where they can interact with people they agree with. Echo chambers are a thing.

This is why you see mostly positive opinions on the forums, it's like wondering why people like chess in a chess forum. People here are gonna like ED because it is a sub-forum about it.
 
Just read the Lavecon announcement and it sounds as if it is just another way to buy ship skins. As long as I can buy stuff from store as well, that'll be fine.

PS liked the idea of being able to change skin while out on a long trip in the void. Gives you something to do.
 
Please for the love of god do not remove 1:1 purchases. If I have to buy a 1000ARX pack and 500ARX pack to buy something that is 1200ARX I will not be spending any more money on ship cosmetics. Give me direct purchases or give me death!

That's pretty-much what I'm expecting; Arx will be sold in increments of, say, 1000 and store stuff will be bought for increments of 600, or whatever.

At best, I guess we can hope that the in-game earnable Arx rewards will be enough to "top up" our Arx balance so we can buy something else.

More likely, though, the theory is that if we buy, say, 1000 Arx and then buy a paint-pack for 600 Arx, we'll just piddle away the rest on bobble-heads or decals or whatever else just to spend the whole 1000 Arx.
In that case, it'll be up to us to prove that theory wrong.
 
The only thing that hits me hard with ED transactions is the exchange rate (yay Canadian dollar!) I still buy cosmetic stuff tho.
 
  • Like (+1)
Reactions: EUS
...<snip>... and now, anyone can get all that just by playing, which is what I was doing.
Does it add a new game feature? yes. You can now play more and earn more arx.
Am I going to be refunded the hundreds of Euro I spent? In all fairness, with the hours I put in, I'd have earned enough Arx!

Well, not to be cynical but if the ARX-earning is going to be implemented in any way similar to modern games, a lifetime of playing Elite most likely won't earn you enough ARX but to get a single skin for the Sidewinder. In most cases the whole purpose of these "earn in-game" mechanics are to be so slow the players will (or at least be inclined to) take the quick road and just buy them with real money.

Obviously, I've no idea what FD have in mind or how they're going to implement this so this is just speculation. But them being a business and businesses running with money, I'm pretty sure FD would rather see the money.
 
Just read the Lavecon announcement and it sounds as if it is just another way to buy ship skins. As long as I can buy stuff from store as well, that'll be fine.

PS liked the idea of being able to change skin while out on a long trip in the void. Gives you something to do.

You can't buy them directly with real money on the store, only convert real money to ARX to then buy the skins. I think some people have the concern that the prices will be such that you'll end up doing something like:

  • Buy 500 ARX with £10
  • Buy 2 ship skins and have 100 ARX left.
  • Either play for 2 months to make up the 100 ARX (at 50 ARX a month maximum return for playing) to buy another skin, or buy another pack of ARX with real money to make up the shortfall. Rinse and repeat.
Some will rightly point out that if you play regularly that's not an issue as you'll end up with 100 ARD over two months and just buy another skin. Others would say it's a technique to either

a) Keep you playing
b) Make you pay more real money to buy the other skins you want, and still end up with ARX left over. That's different to just stumping up £2.50 for a skin and having done with it.

Until Frontier commit (I expect they'll be reading this and other threads) then we don't know.
 
Just read the Lavecon announcement and it sounds as if it is just another way to buy ship skins. As long as I can buy stuff from store as well, that'll be fine.

Honestly, I'd be surprised if this was still the case.
Don't get me wrong; I hope it will still be the case but I don't expect it to be.

Seems like an obvious banefit of this will be that FDev won't need to update the web-store for ED any more.
They'll just have to sell Arx there (along with the actual games) and then you'll do all your other shopping in-game.

Course, OTOH, that won't make a lot of difference if they still sell stuff for their other games in the web-store.
Anybody know if the "theme park" games are getting some kind of in-game currency too?
 
Just to be clear, from the Community Questions on the ARX FAQ

Thought that'd be the case. (y)

Hope FDev have the brains to get the Arx purchasing system up and running a couple of weeks prior to the update, so people have opportunity to buy their Arx without any kind of stampede causing a store meltdown when the update hits.
 
If the exchange rate is a concern can you not just buy in a different currency?
Bizarre question.

We do purchase in different currencies, we have no choice since FD only sells in EUR, USD or Rubles (of all things).

But that 3.5 EUR Asp skin is $5.32 CAD
Same skin that costs 4USD is $5.44 CAD
Same skin @ 225 rubles is $~5.40CAD <=guesstimate, my bank wouldn't give me an exchange rate for ruble.

So today, I'd buy in EUR.
Tomorrow, or whenever FD decides to update their FX rates, it will be a different story.
 
We do purchase in different currencies, we have no choice since FD only sells in EUR, USD or Rubles (of all things).
Rubles probably because there's a large community of mostly Russian players centered around https://www.elite-games.ru/. (For a long while The biggest place to go to for Elite stuff, before ED happened.) At least, they used to be very active earlier (they won the contest to add their own PowerPlay leader too), I have no idea how active they are these days. But Frontier knows where their buyers are coming from, and I assume that enough of them came from Russia that it was worth it for Frontier to accept rubles in their store.

I forgot to ask why he actually comes here after his bullet pointed list of reddits virtues and our failures [...]
Oh hey, do you have a link for that? I'm curious, although I don't expect much.
 
Last edited:
Is it a game changer? yes. I've multiples of thousands of hours in Elite across 5 accounts. I've spent literally hundreds of Euro on paint jobs and kits etc, and now, anyone can get all that just by playing, which is what I was doing.

Does it add a new game feature? yes. You can now play more and earn more arx.

Am I going to be refunded the hundreds of Euro I spent? In all fairness, with the hours I put in, I'd have earned enough Arx!

To be fair... I'm going to make a logical guess that to earn what you've purchased for hundreds of Euros is going to take many thousands of hours of gameplay. FDev have stated that there will be a maximum amount of ARX you can earn per week. In order to not cannibalize the sale of ARX gift cards, they won't allow you to earn very many points over a short period of time.
 
I wonder (suspect), given ARX has been written into lore via the Bank of Zaonce, if we'll see in game offers of increased ARX for doing specific activities for a limited amount of time?

So a week of mining low temperature diamonds will make you double the ARX value over doing any other activity.
 
Yeah, there also often seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about how stock market investors (such as Tencent here) “make money from their investments”.

So if I understand you correctly, you're paranoid about "watching the same thing occur again" without knowledge nor examples of it happening previously, yet such information is easy to obtain via Google?

"I don't like this because of some imaginary perceived slight based on my paranoid speculation" appears to be the scenario here :ROFLMAO:

Also: Arx can be earned in-game - those that actually play the game will get cosmetics for free.

Speculation: are the ones complaining about Arx (earnable non-the-less) those that don't actually play the game (therefore won't earn Arx)? Only FDev have the answer.

P.S. you still haven't answered my question:

I have watched enough games over the years to see the influence of various monetization processes change....none of them made the game play better. They added new currencies, changed how rewards were paid out, basically, most increase the grind...or you can certainly pay real money to get your goodies. What I have seen is that most changes show up through the in game advertising, conversion rates, etc. homogenized the experience towards a Free to play feeling....

I'm not saying this is a certainty towards the outcome...but games, and gameplay, do change in ways that support the monetization scheme. And any game I have played has had the play experience changed more to a Free to Play feeling...than the original pay to play game.

I am not paranoid...but have watched this occur before...and will watch it occur again.
 
Oh hey, do you have a link for that? I'm curious, although I don't expect much.

It was in one of the recent fss threads. They are way too long to look though, and it would be naming and shaming. If you must see it by all means. Search for his posts and the word 'reddit' maybe.
 
I have watched enough games over the years to see the influence of various monetization processes change....none of them made the game play better. They added new currencies, changed how rewards were paid out, basically, most increase the grind...or you can certainly pay real money to get your goodies. What I have seen is that most changes show up through the in game advertising, conversion rates, etc. homogenized the experience towards a Free to play feeling....

I'm not saying this is a certainty towards the outcome...but games, and gameplay, do change in ways that support the monetization scheme. And any game I have played has had the play experience changed more to a Free to Play feeling...than the original pay to play game.

I am not paranoid...but have watched this occur before...and will watch it occur again.
Did you bring up these concerns when practically the same virtual currency (Frontier Points as opposed to Arx) was implemented in 2015 for Elite on Xbox, or in 2017 on PS4?

Do you feel the game and/or gameplay has changed since Frontier Points were implemented?

Elite Dangerous' virtual currency usage is 4 years old. Is Elite Dangerous more Free2Play now than it was in 2015?
 
Top Bottom