Glory to Arstotzka!
Question about financial injections into Elite dangerous.
- Thread starter Rory12
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Glory to Arstotzka!
Thanks, if I were Elon Musk I would buy Fdev and ask here what we all want. But unfortunately
Especially when you consider that humbug artist’s track record to date: Hyperloop, Boring Company, self-driving cars, Tesla Truck, Tesla Semi, Tesla Bot, the company formerly known as Twitter, etc…
Needless to say, I disagree. I’ve played plenty of games where paid expansion provided plenty of new content, without that content being so fundamentally better that players are at a significant disadvantage without it. For example, the difference between paid expansions in Space Engineers, and every Paradox game I’ve ever made.
The former provides mostly cosmetic blocks, and new scenarios that uses those cosmetic blocks. The latter inevitably grants content so grossly overpowered, that I uninstall them to keep the base game more interesting.
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Odyssey is actually pretty okay as far as expansion go (if only because it's basically a seperate game, and certainly compared to Horizons). But for me, I did quite literally only buy Odyssey because I was sick of feeling like I couldn't compete in War CGs anymore. Running around playing capture-the-flag generates many times as many combat bonds as using my fully-armed military warship to destroy other military warships. I guess Exobio also has some pretty silly payouts, not that I've ever touched it.
Immediately after I purchased Odyssey, the supply of War CGs did completely dry up though, so I guess that's one way to fix the problem.
In Horizons, if I want to, say participate in a new CG, I have to either fly the ship over during my precious play time, or fly a runabout over at the end of my play time, and then transfer the ship over. Either way, I’ll lose a play session.
In Odyssey, I can hop on an Apex taxi while I eat breakfast, and then transfer my ship over. I get an extra play session that way. That is pay to win in my book.
Sorry that's not even close to pay to win, its just a convenience that was introduced with an update that everyone has access to if they buy the expansion.
Its like me saying i cant have the updated items in ESO if i haven't brought the new Chapter.
Neither of these is pay to win, its just time and game progression.
As for the time it takes to fetch a ship, that depends on where you park it and where the CG is.
Apex taxis are slow, its way faster to fly the ship.
You can also have a fleet carrier and never have to worry about transferring ships ever again.
O7
What you describe is a form of pay to win. Call it what you will, convenience, bonus, advantage, efficiency, whatever, you’re paying for, an admittedly small, leg up over those who play the base game.
If the new items are overpowered compared to the base game, and most of the action happens in the base game, then that would be a form of P2W.
Note that it doesn’t even need to be a multi-player game. Single player games can also be pay to win. I quite enjoy Paradox games, but I’m now wary of purchasing any of their DLCs and cosmetics, because they inevitably make the base gameplay much easier. I want new scenarios and maps from DLCs, not easy mode.
Paying to save time, and paying to speed up game progression, are forms of pay to win.
It doesn’t matter how slow the taxi is, if I’m invulnerable while in it, and can do it while afk.
Or I can use those billions of credits on other things in the game, without littering the game with yet another annoying Monument to Ozymandias. I’d also need to make many Apex Transfers each week just exceed the cost of maintenance.
Needless to say, we have very different views of what is pay to win. Let’s just agree to disagree, and focus on the actual topic of this thread: The notion of giving charity to for-profit companies.
My brother in Zarquon, reporting of the finances regarding Frontier Developments may be found in Frontier Developments' financial reports.
When a blogger says something and they have
then simply don't read them.
When a blogger says something and they have
- no primary sources
- no secondary sources
- no reasoning that would meet the reasonableness test in the US or the UK
then simply don't read them.
Facts don't matter man, only belief. That's why the person with the most followers wins.
They are some silly payouts but boy you can make a lot of money with those payouts. Touch it. Touch it a lot. I do.
Yes, but bloggers have a huge influence on audience activity.
A new player may never come to ED just because he heard a blogger say "the game is dead."
That's why I raised the topic of finance from the old audience. Even 2000 ED fans are enough to maintain the ecosystem, even without significant development.
I didn't get anything from Odyssey (for me the main gameplay is VR). But eventually I bought Odyssey like the financial support. (Although I continue to be upset about the lack of VR on feet
).---
This approach is realistic:
- determine development directions and priorities;
- estimate the average contribution for current audience (can use ARX or DLC);
- hire people and make improvements.
To do this, Fdev needs to make an offer to the players and make some commitments.
But I don’t think that we will have problems to raise finance for example to develop landings on planets with atmospheres. A small DLC for about $35 is enough to pay for a one year of two specialists.
If a company thinks it has financial survivability issues, telling the customer base to donate money so it can stay in business is a terrible idea. This is basically telling the world the game is dead. They will lose investors and employees. And they won't be able to hire anybody except unemployed desperate people. Nobody is going to quit their good job and relocate to a software company advertising they have basic survivability issues.
Selling products for money is a good method for a company to stay in business.
Has it been confirmed that ground bonds contribute equal to space bonds? Because if yes, that's a definite advantage. If ground bonds affect much less, so that time invested vs reward is more or less equal, then not an issue.
For normal BGS, I think it is questionable. Ground CZ completions themselves seem to be worth less than space, but then you get way more bonds. The most important aspect there is probably which you enjoy more and which you're better outfitted for.
Thats only if you don't care about the cash, though. If you need to earn money, ground CZs are massively better than space CZs, and CGs only care about the raw bond totals. So for determining the outcomes of CGs, an Odyssey player would be worth several Horizons players. The effect is quite easy to see comparing pre and post Odyssey CGs, I could probably find some examples when I'm at my computer.
I really hoped CGs would be the key feature rework to address this and other issues. Now I'd just be happy if we got them regularly again.
I'm not an idiot, and I don't expect the developers here to write "we're finished, give a cent for food."
I just wanted to signal that there are users could fund some new ED features. For me it's VR on foot and atmospheric planets.
Support can be in any form, it's a matter of marketing. This could be DLC or bonuses for ARX (after some time the bonus will become available to the entire audience) etc.
Yes but as they are a traded company anything other than them selling more games/arx/dlcs to you or us could well be a legal minefield. Going to a bank, stock broker, online brokers and buying shares in FDev at about a couple of quid each plus costs would be better than donations.
Sounds like a good opportunity to reiterate my-for-one expressing willingness to pay extra to offset the expense of improved VR support, for its niche-within-a-niche audience, even were it to be a minimal implementation that just completes stereo vision continuity to every part of the game, without adding spatial interactivity (...which would be super, and some things are almost as were they designed for it, but an "all or nothing" attitude is all but certain to to guarantee the latter, and the latter is definitely much, much worse than "some").
...but no "investing" blindly here -- any extra money from me comes earmarked.
(EDIT: ...I'll also pay extra for telemetry data output to motion platforms, even though I haven't got a motion platform... not yet, at least.)
...but no "investing" blindly here -- any extra money from me comes earmarked.
(EDIT: ...I'll also pay extra for telemetry data output to motion platforms, even though I haven't got a motion platform... not yet, at least.
)
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That won't help Frontier directly in the general case - you'll be buying those shares from another existing shareholder.
If Frontier were trying to raise money through issuing new shares (they've only recently done this in very small quantities to offer stock options to employees) then buying them directly on issue would give them money, but changes in the ownership of already-issued minority shares are largely irrelevant, and the impact anyone with consumer-grade finances is going to make on Frontier's overall share price is negligible.
No, there aren't. Features are expensive!
The game currently costs about £4m/year to run (and can be run profitably like that), but doing Odyssey-paced development cost Frontier more like £9m/year (and that would certainly not be profitable right now), and we can probably assume that Odyssey-paced development would be required for a major feature like "dense atmosphere planets" if that involved anything more than "turn the skybox opacity up a bit", and it would almost certainly take more than a year, too.
There are not enough superfans willing to collectively put in an extra £5m/year for that (that's over and above what they already spend annually on alts and ARX), especially not up front on a "I'm sure it'll be good when it comes out" basis. If there were that many, Odyssey would have covered its costs solely on pre-orders ... which it didn't by a long shot ... and Frontier would just have carried on developing further expansions on that basis.
You were literally asking a company to announce financial problems and calling for charity event. To prevent the game from closing. Your words from your posts.
Maybe you should read your own posts?
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