A season in Elite is one year so you are paying for one year's worth of content.
No, with Horizons you paid for Season 2, which includes all updates from 2.0-2.4. You can continue to play your version of the game as long as you want (or the game exists). After 2.4 they'll release Season 3 which you only need to pay for if you want to access the new features that are coming with it. We don't know what will be part of Season 3 yet. A season roughly translates to a year of 4-5 major updates with new gameplay mechanics like planetary landings or (maybe Season 3?) walking around.
Aye given the pace of point releases so far, I think "Season" may come to mean "A cycle of content, taking a little over a year to deploy".
Buying Horizons is a bit like buying DLC or an expansion pack for an existing game you own. Although someone will be quick to point out that you have to pay up front and then FD trickle deliver the content over the course of the next year or so (oh, the huge manatee...)
Buying Horizons is a bit like buying DLC or an expansion pack for an existing game you own. Although someone will be quick to point out that you have to pay up front and then FD trickle deliver the content over the course of the next year or so (oh, the huge manatee...)
A season is not necessarily one year. It's just a series of updates, for Horizons it's 2.0-2.4. Right now it looks like Season 2 will last longer than a year.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
This is correct. Frontier have said in the past that each Season will last about a year, but it's not a definitive Season=1 Year.
You can play the game even if you don't pay for the future Seasons. All that means is that you won't have the access to the new content they introduce. Saying that, some of the content introduced in the given season applies to previous seasons too, so you would still get updates to your game, just not all of the new features - definitely not the major headline features of the new Season that you don't own.
Hope that makes sense
The one thing I am curious about, is what happens to the season 2 content, when season 3 comes out.
Will each and every season be and remain one in a growing assortment of DLC, that you can pick and choose from at your heart's content, leaving Frontier (and for that matter, the launch menu) with numerous possible stacks and permutations to maintain and support (nothing that can't be done very smoothly, with a well thought out structure, but the escalation in complexity and player base fragmentation remains real), or will some things fold into others over time? (E.g: Season 2 could be included with Season 3, like the base game was originally with Season 2, leaving us with the same two options as today: Base game only, and Base game plus everything else; Or it could be written off as old and be baked into the Base game (EDIT: 32bit concerns notwithstanding), upgrading its market value, and belatedly bringing old users up to date, maybe renewing any waning interest on their part, and possibly tempting them with Season 3. In both cases, I am sure we'd find ourselves in the same situation, with complaints about unfairness etc, that led to the change, mosly in nomenclature, back at 2.0 launch time, but... )
...or something completely different... Or maybe a halfway thing, such as a linear upgrade path, where you have to purchase Season 2 before you can buy Season 3, and so on, with the age of the season determining its price...
Will each and every season be and remain one in a growing assortment of DLC, that you can pick and choose from at your heart's content, leaving Frontier (and for that matter, the launch menu
) with numerous possible stacks and permutations to maintain and support (nothing that can't be done very smoothly, with a well thought out structure, but the escalation in complexity and player base fragmentation remains real), or will some things fold into others over time? (E.g: Season 2 could be included with Season 3, like the base game was originally with Season 2, leaving us with the same two options as today: Base game only, and Base game plus everything else; Or it could be written off as old and be baked into the Base game (EDIT: 32bit concerns notwithstanding), upgrading its market value, and belatedly bringing old users up to date, maybe renewing any waning interest on their part, and possibly tempting them with Season 3. In both cases, I am sure we'd find ourselves in the same situation, with complaints about unfairness etc, that led to the change, mosly in nomenclature, back at 2.0 launch time, but... )...or something completely different... Or maybe a halfway thing, such as a linear upgrade path, where you have to purchase Season 2 before you can buy Season 3, and so on, with the age of the season determining its price...
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The one thing I am curious about, is what happens to the season 2 content, when season 3 comes out.
Will each and every season be and remain one in a growing assortment of DLC, that you can pick and choose from at your heart's content, leaving Frontier (and for that matter, the launch menu
...or something completely different... Or maybe a halfway thing, such as a linear upgrade path, where you have to purchase Season 2 before you can buy Season 3, and so on, with the age of the season determining its price...
Wow, awesome post! I think you managed to list every possible option and their consequences.
The one thing I am curious about, is what happens to the season 2 content, when season 3 comes out.
Will each and every season be and remain one in a growing assortment of DLC, that you can pick and choose from at your heart's content, leaving Frontier (and for that matter, the launch menu
...or something completely different... Or maybe a halfway thing, such as a linear upgrade path, where you have to purchase Season 2 before you can buy Season 3, and so on, with the age of the season determining its price...
I can see season 2 being included into the base game from season 4 onwards, then season 3 being inluded into the base game from season 5 etc.