Pay2Win made it to Elite

[Rat Catcher]

I remember DB saying the store would only sell cosmetics....

I'm very fortunate, I started playing after so many 'promises' were made, so don't feel betrayed by anything...
(and, possibly, even had I been playing from day 1, I wouldn't be complaining that "XXX" hasn't appeared, has changed, or isn't what I expected - but admit to having entirely the wrong attitude toward playing games)

 

[Brrokk]

I'm very fortunate, I started playing after so many 'promises' were made, so don't feel betrayed by anything...
(and, possibly, even had I been playing from day 1, I wouldn't be complaining that "XXX" hasn't appeared, has changed, or isn't what I expected - but admit to having entirely the wrong attitude toward playing games)

I'm from a simpler age.

If I like the look of a game I buy it; I play it for a bit; if I like it I carry on playing, otherwise I stop.

I don't ever take into account what the maker says they'll do or not do in the future.

 

[alexzk]

Or one of you owns a Fleet Carrier and you transport an entire wing's customised ships at once.

Yes, but, Anaconda can fly Bubble->Colonia in less than 2 hours. And this transported person is immediately ready to play in Colonia without further delays and pay outs. For example, summon ships and unlock engineers there. So if you have friend with Anaconda or have own Anaconda you could start in Bubble and unlock all engineers in 1 day in Colonia without big expenses and preparations.
Classic ways would require transport ships / buy ships which is tens / hundreds of millions of the credits in any way + days of time "wasted".
Also rich people can use this trick to avoid "farming" engineers in the Bubble at all.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yes, but, Anaconda can fly Bubble->Colonia in less than 2 hours. And this transported person is immediately ready to play in Colonia without further delays and pay outs. For example, summon ships and unlock engineers there. So if you have friend with Anaconda or have own Anaconda you could start in Bubble and unlock all engineers in 1 day in Colonia without big expenses and preparations.

You'd need to have unlocked and upgraded the four basic engineers in the bubble to get access to the Colonia ship engineers at all, so you can't skip that step entirely.

If you're going to spend 2 hours as a passive passenger aboard a friend's Anaconda trip to Colonia, you might as well take an overnight FC ferry instead and not need to spend the travel time logged in, plus you can take your ships you want to engineer out there with you. Conversely if you personally own an Anaconda capable of doing the trip in 2 hours ... you must have unlocked and ranked up a fair few bubble engineers already, grabbed the Guardian FSD booster, and also be very practised with neutron jumps, map plotting, etc ... at which point the theoretical advantages of this approach are probably not actually all that useful to you.


Yes, you can then additionally use the pre-paid to get a baseline T-6, DBX, Python II and Chieftain in Colonia to engineer locally ... but:
- if you were planning to use those ships out at Colonia, you're basically just saving the half-billion credits (mainly on the Python II) in purchase costs, which isn't nowadays a massive barrier (the Anaconda you bought to get out here in two hours costs most of that anyway!) to anyone capable of reaching Colonia in the first place. Lots of undiscovered exobiology out here, plenty of lucrative mission opportunities, your friend can help you with some 50M wing missions.
- if you weren't planning to use the ships out here, but take them back to the bubble, then using pre-builds doesn't help much: once engineered you can't use the sell-and-redeploy feature without losing the engineering. At best you get cheaper ship transfer back to the bubble ... but "someone else's carrier" is free and faster for that for any ship anyway.
- the disadvantage of using the Colonia engineers exclusively if you don't intend to primarily base yourself in Colonia is that you only get four pinned blueprints that way. So if you're operating in the bubble you'll also want to unlock the bubble engineers anyway unless you really like doing round trips.
- if you just want to unlock the Colonia engineers, pin some key blueprints and then head back to the bubble to do things normally ... sure, teleporting a pre-build over might help with doing the local bits of the unlocks, but you're only saving 10% of the hull cost in the long run over buying a ship locally and then selling it again once you're done.

 

[alexzk]

If you're going to spend 2 hours as a passive passenger aboard a friend's Anaconda trip to Colonia, you might as well take an overnight FC ferry instead and not need to spend the travel time logged in, plus you can take your ships you want to engineer out there with you. Conversely if you personally own an Anaconda capable of doing the trip in 2 hours ... you must have unlocked and ranked up a fair few bubble engineers already, grabbed the Guardian FSD booster, and also be very practised with neutron jumps, map plotting, etc ... at which point the theoretical advantages of this approach are probably not actually all that useful to you.

What about pre-made exploration ship from the shop ? Do it do 70 ly ? If so, then it can reach the Colony in couple hours too.
Carrier requires 16 hours of jumping 3 times per hour. I had CG delivery to Colonia once, never again

but you're only saving 10% of the hull cost in the long run over buying a ship locally and then selling it again once you're done.

Well, doing unlocks on engineered ship and complete new are different stories. Shop's MK-2 will do everything super fast I bet.

So that's the difference, classic way will require 1-2 weeks for traveling, then some time on doing unlocks. And credits.
Having teleported ships will cut off all this. You can do all in 1 day for the record.

Another scenario - use 80-90 ly jump Anaconda to get to any DSSA carrier, then teleport DBX and start to look around using it.

Also it's just a start. It will be more ships later I assume. And "teleporting" will be "a must" at some time, game changes.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What about pre-made exploration ship from the shop ? Do it do 70 ly ?

Around 45 LY in its pre-made fit. It's a usable all-rounder starter explorer build but it's not going to be setting any records, especially since its fuel scoop is significantly (long-range travellers might say "painfully") undersized.

Carrier requires 16 hours of jumping 3 times per hour.

Yes - that's why you hitch a ride on someone else's carrier so those 16 hours take place while you sleep.

Another scenario - use 80-90 ly jump Anaconda to get to any DSSA carrier, then teleport DBX and start to look around using it.

I fail to see the advantage - given that if you can engineer an Anaconda with 80-90 LY range you can also engineer a DBX for a similar range at a much lower credit cost - over just flying a properly-built and engineered DBX out there to start with.

Or if you must fly out in the Anaconda, use the carrier's shipyard to transfer a normal DBX with a better build. It'll take a while to arrive but you can use the Anaconda to explore in the meantime and the transfer costs on a DBX are tiny.

Well, doing unlocks on engineered ship and complete new are different stories. Shop's MK-2 will do everything super fast I bet.

The unlock requirements for the Colonia ship engineers are (assuming you've already got the bubble engineers unlocked and repped up):
- become friendly with Colonia Council and provide 100,000 cr of bounty vouchers. The Python-2 combat prebuild will theoretically help with that, but it's only 100,000 credits so you could get those just as quickly by sticking some weapons on your travel ship, flying to the medium RES outside Jaques Station, and helping the cops with one or two kills.
- get exploration rank Surveyor (tricky to avoid nowadays) and 10 units Osmium. That is within the capability of the mining pre-build but again it's hardly saving you much time over building your own mining ship at Jaques, especially since the mining pre-build only has a single collector limpet.
- combat rank Expert + 200 units progenitor cells. None of the pre-builds so far have great cargo capacity, so you could either do it in 3 runs with the miner, or do it yourself in 1 by buying a T-7 normally. If you were starting from Harmless then the Python-2 prebuild might help with getting your rank up for the other bit but it's still going to take a beginner a while to get to Expert (more than all the rest combined, I would think!). The T-8 prebuild might be more help, assuming that is a freighter, on the hauling step, but by the time you have Expert combat rank [1] the bounties acquired along the way would let you buy a T-7 anyway.
- trade rank Dealer (selling the things which aren't Osmium from the mining run will sort that out if it's somehow not been achieved already) + 25 occupied escape pods. None of the prebuilds are really set up for getting the pods and most of them don't have the cargo space either. You could modify the miner pre-build but you're not really gaining any efficiency over buying a more suitable ship to start with.

But okay: an experienced player with pre-build access might be able to save an hour or two on the Colonia unlocks for their new alt, if they were also making use of a bunch of other optimisations already. But then what? And was it really worth paying £30-60 on pre-builds to save a couple of hours / a few tens of millions of credits on a once-and-done task?

[1] The most sensible way to get it is probably to join an Orthrus-hunting Spire party before you leave for Colonia, for both relatively fast progression to Expert rank and enough credits that you'll not need to worry about those for any of the other steps. If you wait until you get out here you're stuck on fighting normal NPCs for lower payouts. And yes, you could use the AX prebuild for that bit.

Also it's just a start. It will be more ships later I assume. And "teleporting" will be "a must" at some time, game changes.

It is impressive how Frontier's recent decisions have changed a community's collective anxiety from
"Why aren't Frontier telling us how they're going to make the game better? We need a roadmap!"
to
"What if Frontier make the game even worse?"
but I think the same applies - very little of what might be specifically imagined will actually happen.

 

[Rat Catcher]

It is impressive how Frontier's recent decisions have changed a community's collective anxiety from
"Why aren't Frontier telling us how they're going to make the game better? We need a roadmap!"
to
"What if Frontier make the game even worse?"
but I think the same applies - very little of what might be specifically imagined will actually happen.

Depending on which side of the fence one stands, this is a great idea from FD, or the sky is falling and we'll all be dragged to the 12th circle of Hades along with FD. (Or the third, on the fence position, which I subscribe to)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Depending on which side of the fence one stands, this is a great idea from FD, or the sky is falling and we'll all be dragged to the 12th circle of Hades along with FD. (Or the third, on the fence position, which I subscribe to)

I do find it interesting to think about how the following alternative might have been received, released as a standard DLC:
"2024 Ships Season Pass - £40. Four new ships coming between now and December, starting with the Python Mk 2. In addition gives access to some pre-built existing ships to help beginners and alt accounts get started. Pre-order and get a free Python 2 ship kit and paint!"

The content, price and P2W aspects would all be pretty similar; the prior acceptance of Horizons-exclusive ships mean that it would probably have been far less controversial packaged up this way; the "free with Odyssey in 3 months" aspect gets replaced by patient players able to pick the whole thing up in a sale for £10 in 6-12 months time.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I do find it interesting to think about how the following alternative might have been received, released as a standard DLC:
"2024 Ships Season Pass - £40. Four new ships coming between now and December, starting with the Python Mk 2. In addition gives access to some pre-built existing ships to help beginners and alt accounts get started. Pre-order and get a free Python 2 ship kit and paint!"

The content, price and P2W aspects would all be pretty similar; the prior acceptance of Horizons-exclusive ships mean that it would probably have been far less controversial packaged up this way; the "free with Odyssey in 3 months" aspect gets replaced by patient players able to pick the whole thing up in a sale for £10 in 6-12 months time.

They would have had to give that to the LEP holders for free.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

For alternative release methods I'm also thinking that announcing 4 ships and releasing them so staggered over time is motivating me to not jump the gun on unlocking the first ship available. I'll only have free arx for 1-2 -- what if another one of the remaining 3 is even more of a must-have day 1? People actually buying arx might limit themselves to one too despite being tempted to spend more by the staggered releases.

 

[vanFace]

I do find it interesting to think about how the following alternative might have been received, released as a standard DLC:
"2024 Ships Season Pass - £40. Four new ships coming between now and December, starting with the Python Mk 2. In addition gives access to some pre-built existing ships to help beginners and alt accounts get started. Pre-order and get a free Python 2 ship kit and paint!"

The content, price and P2W aspects would all be pretty similar; the prior acceptance of Horizons-exclusive ships mean that it would probably have been far less controversial packaged up this way; the "free with Odyssey in 3 months" aspect gets replaced by patient players able to pick the whole thing up in a sale for £10 in 6-12 months time.

I would most probably wait for a sale to bring that below 20€ and buy it. Just 4 ships and some prebuilds isn't worth forty IMHO.

 

[Sublime]

I do find it interesting to think about how the following alternative might have been received, released as a standard DLC:
"2024 Ships Season Pass - £40. Four new ships coming between now and December, starting with the Python Mk 2. In addition gives access to some pre-built existing ships to help beginners and alt accounts get started. Pre-order and get a free Python 2 ship kit and paint!"

The content, price and P2W aspects would all be pretty similar; the prior acceptance of Horizons-exclusive ships mean that it would probably have been far less controversial packaged up this way; the "free with Odyssey in 3 months" aspect gets replaced by patient players able to pick the whole thing up in a sale for £10 in 6-12 months time.

Wording it like that means they would have had to give it out for free to all LEP owners, it would be hard to justify not doing so. I’m not sure if that’s something they are trying to avoid or not.

 

[alexzk]

It is impressive how Frontier's recent decisions have changed a community's collective anxiety from
"Why aren't Frontier telling us how they're going to make the game better? We need a roadmap!"
to
"What if Frontier make the game even worse?"
but I think the same applies - very little of what might be specifically imagined will actually happen.

I'm not convinced.
It happened with carriers already. It became "a must" for any new player. Most of people just get it for each twink, despite initially it was planned for guilds only.
I think all those small bonuses of teleportation & no re-buy will add up, so everybody will want those ships eventually.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I do find it interesting to think about how the following alternative might have been received, released as a standard DLC:
"2024 Ships Season Pass - £40. Four new ships coming between now and December, starting with the Python Mk 2. In addition gives access to some pre-built existing ships to help beginners and alt accounts get started. Pre-order and get a free Python 2 ship kit and paint!"

I was about to say that the price would be unacceptable to some, and...

I would most probably wait for a sale to bring that below 20€ and buy it. Just 4 ships and some prebuilds isn't worth forty IMHO.

Sounds like a common comment made on this forum, apparently all of the whales are supporting CIG and folk here make the average Church Mouse look well-heeled...

I don't think there is a single solution FD could present that would be well-received by the majority of voices on their forum (and certainly not on reddit), so the current strategy is likely no worse than any other single solution.

Fortunately, the voices suggesting the game should be ended as in the tiniest minority, so far...

Edit: Typo!

 

[vanFace]

Sounds like a common comment made on this forum, apparently all of the whales are supporting COG and folk here make the average Church Mouse look well-heeled...

Guilty as charged. I'm looking up to the average Church Mouse as my wealthy overlord. Maybe our resident pest control officer can bring justice to us low dwellers?

 

[Rat Catcher]

Guilty as charged. I'm looking up to the average Church Mouse as my wealthy overlord. Maybe our resident pest control officer can bring justice to us low dwellers?

Alas, my state pension can only provide occasional luxuries... (I even had to remainder the Chauffer!)

Yours was the perfect example of a sentiment expressed many times since I joined this forum...
Paying for anything non-essential is a considered decision, it is true, and digital stores are very hard to shop-lift from!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Wording it like that means they would have had to give it out for free to all LEP owners, it would be hard to justify not doing so. I’m not sure if that’s something they are trying to avoid or not.

I can't imagine that the number of LEP owners still active - and there were never that many to start with - would make any noticeable difference to whether this ends up a financial success. (With the planned fold-in to Odyssey, it is merely a delay on LEP owners getting hold of it, so very much only of relevance for LEP owners playing right now anyway)

I would most probably wait for a sale to bring that below 20€ and buy it. Just 4 ships and some prebuilds isn't worth forty IMHO.

Of course. As with Horizons and Odyssey they'd get the early sales from the people who would pay £40, then reduce it over time to pick up more people at lower price points later. Like Odyssey it might still be bringing in £5 a time a few years after release, too.

 

[Spaceman-FXL5]

Well, I've done the alternative to getting the P2 without Arx as the only way in EDH - either now for Arx, or in 3 months, again for Arx, in EDH either way.

How?
I was holding off getting Ody until they implement Ody ONLY CG's or storyline (which they haven't done completely as yet), but now I've gone and bought Ody for a tenner AND I get the P2 for in game Cr's in 3 months time with no requirements to spend any Arx, I think.

Just £10 and a little patience is now required.

Also, I now have some new game play and learning curves until then, such as EDO exploration in between destroying Titans, or I may try the Spire Sites - which I can't even get to in EDH!

 

[Rat Catcher]

Also, I now have some new game play and learning curves until then, such as EDO exploration in between destroying Titans, or I may try the Spire Sites - which I can't even get to in EDH!

It'll be fun, particularly the Spires... there is nothing quiite like boosting to shoot something close to the ground, then having your ship shut down
Others here may rib you a little for buying Elite's FPS, naturally...

 

[vanFace]

I was holding off getting Ody until they implement Ody ONLY CG's or storyline (which they haven't done completely as yet), but now I've gone and bought Ody for a tenner AND I get the P2 for in game Cr's in 3 months time with no requirements to spend any Arx, I think.

Good decision. I fully admit that I've let myself get sucked into the hype train around Odyssey and shelled out for early access. A rather costly lesson to never, ever do that again in my life. But hey, stupid kids like me need to touch that hot plate to actually understand what everybody else was telling them all the time.