Season 2 ended. How was it for season pass holders and casual players?

[DaviDeMo]

So this is the last patch we get with Season pass year 2 I bought 2 years ago. I admit I'm not happy with it.

I'm a casual player, I don't play a lot. So I have not much money to spend in game.


2.0
- Planetary landings. Wow just wow! I still remember my first landing on a planet. Get out with a SRV, explore and loot. Was very cool. Till on this day I land on random planets that may be cool. Do missions where i have to land on planets are very cool. Contents in 2.0 was awesome!

2.1
- Engineers. Where to start. i have tried some engineers but without a guide I was not able to find anything and with a guide it took everything too much to do. In 30 hours I have tried I did nothing so I just never tried anymore. Too much time for do something with engineers for a casual player.

2.2
- The guardians. It was all about fighters. And well, I cannot afford a ship that can have fighters. The Keelback was the only one I was able to afford but it was a cheap little ship. I have better ships for do my stuff in game. So I have tried fighters for one time and it was cool. But then I went back to my better ships but that can not have fighters.
-Passenger transport missions was the only new thing I was able to do. But after a while they were just cargo that speak. Yeah... it's something new.

2.3
- Multi-crew: Well, I have waited so much for multicrew! The first information was with maximum 4 players! But they scaled down to 3 players and there is no content! One player is the pilot and shoot. One player just shoot. One player go with fighters... if you have fighters... Keelback did not have multi-crew, so we were never able to play multi-crew as one player had to just watch others play.
- Holo-me: Cool... but it's not "content", just fluff.

2.4
- The Return: And here we are with the last expansion of this season pass. I don't know what to expect for a casual player. I have played a bit and I don't see any new content. I went to the aliens (had to find them reading external websites, it's impossibile to find them just playing the game) and yes, I can do cool screenshots now that are a bit different. But nothing was added gameplay related (for now?)


So how was horizons for you? For me it was a big mess. Not enough time to play and everything they have added for season pass holders (planetary landing is still fantastic) is time sink and casual players can not play new content. I know they have added QoL improvements that I did not mention, but they were free for everyone. Not only for season pass holders.

I expected a lot more with the ONE YEAR delay for every expansion. Not happy on how I have spent my money in ED. yes I have played a lot, but the memory I have of these hours of gameplay are not so good. I have memory of many waiting for go to somewhere and do the same stuff over and over again without seeing a real difference in what I just did. I have memory of watching youtube videos/reading reddit for trying to find something new, like aliens. I have many memory of watching my smartphone instead of playing. If I think of other games I have played and the money I have spent, I have not given so many hours in any other games. But in those other games I have happy memory, memory of me raging, memory of me triumph... here in ED I have memory of waiting for something to happen.


I don't know if I can trust FDEV another time with another season pass. I think it's time to say bye bye to this game. In 2 years they have added just little content for a casual players... maybe in other 4 years they will add more. But I don't think I will give my time following every patch like I did when I was fan of the game.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

there will be no more season passes so you are safe there

2.4 has only just started, it is a story based update which will unfold over the coming months. it was a 7GB download so presumably a lot more in there than... well i was gonna say just thargoids but given the model for those was in 2.3 we still have 7GB worth of stuff in there somewhere

I agree overall Horizons has dragged on for too long and for me, was not close to as good as i had imagined. but that is the issue with imaginings, our imagination is nearly always better than reality.

what was RRP on release? £30? I think i have had that amount of monies worth out of it despite its issues and the missing content we were teased (volcanic worlds to land on, an extra srv type and being able to multicrew with SRV - which for me is probably the most interesting aspect of multicrew, combined air and ground stuff.

roll on the core updates coming next and i am excited to learn more about the next major expansion which I hope will be more like a traditional fully fleshed out DLC to steer us through 2018

PS engineers could not be much simpler. the G1-G3 blueprints are literally trivial, and even the G4 and G5 not that bad now.

could the documentation be better? absolutely , stuff like pinning blueprints is daft (aside from minor issue of being broken) but is it so much to ask to be able to access an engineers blueprints from where ever once we find them..... other QOL stuff could be using a filter to make out radar auto highlight materials that we are interested in once they are passively scanned around out ship.

but all that said, come on... it aint hard even as is. clunky? sure! but hard? no.

as for affording SLF capable ships.. i cant agree here even on any level. the economy of ED is so broken that you can earn 100 million credits in under 20 hrs now, even without using any spammy cheap tactics.

to 1 CG and getting into top 50% is trivial..... ok my slf ship is a FGS and that takes time to rank with the feds but a conda now is available to all players prepared to put in even a small amount of time these days.

I used to dream of the conda being a ship i would work too over the course of a few years. but until then, you have the keelback or T9. (I wonder if the T10 will support the hanger?)

TLDR for me Horizons was a very flawed diamond. FD made a number of what i would consider faux pas' but even so, it has undoubtedly improved on the core game imo.

PS where on earth did anyone ever give the impression that ED would be quick to drop her pants for casual players? All the elite games have always been about the long game.

 

[Rob At Work]

I think Fdev lost their way in season 2. Hopefully they will recover it in the next. I have enjoyed it though it was a fun ride (especially here on the forums)

 

[Apos]

I think the guardians kinda flopped in being fleshed out properly and that results in a case where it all boils down to: "The guardians had bio-weapons, the Thargoids have bio-technology, any questions?"

Would like some more meat in their story. Maybe 2.4 will deliver it when integrating their technology, but overall that part has been a bit of a miss in my opinion.

Other than that, as a BGS player, I have to say there have been some improvements. A lot of problems still persist, but steps forward are being taken.

 

[kingbankai]

If they add AI wings, AI crew showing in cockpit, Naval jobs and features, and most of all a second crew member for second fighter then I am good.

 

[Jezzah]

I didn't play much of season 2 aside from 2.0 and 2.1 the rest didn't really interest me. I kinda picked it back up again in 2.3 to dabble with exploration (such as it is) and enjoyed that until I stopped enjoying it.

I'm probably done with ED until some of the next season's improvements drop in such as those with exploration etc.

 

[Barking_Mad]

As a casual player (10 hours a week max) I enjoyed most of the season and was a bit meh about some stuff, but my expectations are pretty easy come, easy go. I always found stuff to do, even if I felt there was too much focus on pew pew.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with shortly for the improvements and whatever Season 3 might be (especially exploration and BGS stuff), and how they choose to do it.

Thanks to all the Devs, Ive had a great time playing. I dont understand the salt, bit of a waste of energy, but there you go.

 

[Nick Sticks]

I think I've had my monies worth just from the forums.

 

[thearmysredneck]

I'm not happy right now as a lifetime pass purchaser that the season thing is gone....too much unknown about how they are going to proceed, and so far feels like a bait and switch, with out the switch. But the engineers, even with its faults, is the headline for me of season 2 and would be somewhat satisfied from the purchase of just the normal pass I suppose if I count the credits from planetary missions.... the rest is too poorly implemented.

Multicrew? Sure if you like constant disconnects so I don't use it.

Planetary landings? Only for engineer stuffs or mission credits.....

Insectoids? Too early to call at this point. I'll say that I haven't bothered to go find out based on what I've seen in the streams and videos. Feel time was better spent getting those 138 optimal multiplier drives last night for my FDL.

 

[jasonbarron]

I adored planetary landings and at first had fun with the engineers until I realized how fundamentally they unbalanced the game. After that I'd say things went downhill. While a number of things were cumulatively added to the overall game that were positive, I think Horizon's purchaser's were not very well represented in the second half of the season. Basically I feel that I just subsidized gradual improvements to vanilla ED, and while this isn't necasarrily a bad thing, I really don't see spending anymore of my money on faith. Even assuming there is something along the lines of a season 3 or the equivalent to spend it on.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

I know this is tiny and trivial in the grand scheme of things, but 2.3's ability to name our ships was huge​ for me.

 

[ozrix84]

The most vivid memory I have of Horizons is that of the fallout that came from the initial pricing of the expansion, closely followed by how Frontier dumped negative reviews on Steam by re-posting the game The game itself was around average, I suppose.

 

[Imo]

Horizons was a disappointment. Frontier should have focused on content making the horizons in Horizons more interesting: atmospheric landings, a sky with clouds, cities, water planets ...

 

[GraXXoR]

I still want to know what the guardians are... I used to read the Galnet posts but I never read anything on Guardians in Galnet and there is no other in game source.
I assumed that after Engineers being engineers and Commanders being the holome commanders that the Guardians referred to the NPCs flying SLFs guarding the mothership. But I read on these forums something about aliens... Not the thargoids, then...

I don't like spoilers and never watch youtube but it's been seriously frustrating trying to follow the game...
apparently there are loads of megaships and alien sites and hyperidctions and... stuff.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

1. SRV Driving & Combat
2. Base Raids
3. Engineer bases
4. Enhanced weapons
5. Ship Launched Fighters
6. NPC Crew
7. Passenger Missions (which were never planned to be part of horizons)
8. Guardian Ruins
9. Player Avatars
10. Multi-crew
11. Camera Suit
12. Thargoid Barnicles, HyperInterdictions and Bases
13. Asteroid bases
14. 2 New Ships (maybe 3 depending on this release)
15. 3 Flyable Fighters
16. too many ‘quality of life’ improvements to mention

To be honest, the only thing I was slightly disappointed with was Multicrew (more of an I-war feeling with an engineer's station, multiple gunners which the gunner role still needs a role axis and ways for crew to help with exploration). Only once all the thargoid content has been released will I be evaluating if it was a succsess or not.

But still quite a lot for £20

 

[PhanttoM]

I'm by means a casual player or "only" a season pass owner. (Almost daily player, lifetime expansion owner)

But I'll ask my buddy at some point. (Who maybe playes 6 hours every month on average)

 

[Snarfbuckle]

I'm not happy right now as a lifetime pass purchaser that the season thing is gone....too much unknown about how they are going to proceed, and so far feels like a bait and switch, with out the switch. But the engineers, even with its faults, is the headline for me of season 2 and would be somewhat satisfied from the purchase of just the normal pass I suppose if I count the credits from planetary missions.... the rest is too poorly implemented.

Multicrew? Sure if you like constant disconnects so I don't use it.

Planetary landings? Only for engineer stuffs or mission credits.....

Insectoids? Too early to call at this point. I'll say that I haven't bothered to go find out based on what I've seen in the streams and videos. Feel time was better spent getting those 138 optimal multiplier drives last night for my FDL.

well, the lifetime pass gives automatic access "to all major downloadable expansion packs as they are released".

Sure, they could make all expansions into microtransactions to avoid the wording but i hardly think that.

They will probably skip seasons and release pure expansions with clear content in each.

Imagine if each 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.2 etc had been 10usd each...this way they get regular income with each part instead of once per season.

 

[Stealthie]

Excellent subject for discussion. [up]

I LOVED being able to land on planets.
I enjoyed the new ships (whichever ones were part of season 2).
I appreciated being able to name my ship.

Honestly, I'm afraid it was all downhill after that.
I like being able to use engineers to pimp my ride but I don't like what they did to the game.
SLF pilots are okay-ish, but they just make me want proper NPC crew/sidekicks.
Multicrew, Horror-Me and all the stuff I can't even remember; no interest at all.

And, now we're at 2.4. There's Thargoids in their own little USS, which everybody joked about, the game seems to have been nerfed up the wazoo and there's so many bugs I hope EVERYBODY is getting one of those "beta test" decals.

Honestly, I suddenly feel like it's time to play through Fallout 4 or Skyrim again.
Maybe come back in a couple of months, when it's all sorted itself out and I've forgotten how I currently feel about ED.

I'd been meaning to buy Euro Truck Sim', just so I can try out some of the car mod's for that......

 

[jasonbarron]

Excellent subject for discussion. [up]

I LOVED being able to land on planets.
I enjoyed the new ships (whichever ones were part of season 2).
I appreciated being able to name my ship.

Honestly, I'm afraid it was all downhill after that.
I like being able to use engineers to pimp my ride but I don't like what they did to the game.
SLF pilots are okay-ish, but they just make me want proper NPC crew/sidekicks.
Multicrew, Horror-Me and all the stuff I can't even remember; no interest at all.

And, now we're at 2.4. There's Thargoids in their own little USS, which everybody joked about, the game seems to have been nerfed up the wazoo and there's so many bugs I hope EVERYBODY is getting one of those "beta test" decals.

Honestly, I suddenly feel like it's time to play through Fallout 4 or Skyrim again.
Maybe come back in a couple of months, when it's all sorted itself out and I've forgotten how I currently feel about ED.

I'd been meaning to buy Euro Truck Sim', just so I can try out some of the car mod's for that......

I am in fact playing through Fallout 4 again, haha. I've gotten thousands of hours of fun out of my financial investment in ED, so I'm certainly not complaining in that sense, but I'm pretty underwhelmed with how things have gone for the last year or so, and I wish I could say I was disappointed with the Thargoids roll out, but I saw this coming from light years away.

If only Fdev hadn't neutered the forum I'd still have something to look forward to!

 

[thearmysredneck]

well, the lifetime pass gives automatic access "to all major downloadable expansion packs as they are released".

Sure, they could make all expansions into microtransactions to avoid the wording but i hardly think that.

They will probably skip seasons and release pure expansions with clear content in each.

Imagine if each 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.2 etc had been 10usd each...this way they get regular income with each part instead of once per season.

Only thing I've seen is they are doing away with season models, which is what I bought the pass for. OK it's going to change, that's cool I get that. But we're in the dark as far as how it's going to be moving forward. So yeah, I'm concerned. That was good money I out down and this season's implementations have been, with a couple of exceptions, either severely lacking or base game improvements. (Im in no way complaining about those improvements) They act like the road map and future stuffs is all destination top secret, mission unknown, and have said nothing that I've seen to quell that concern. That's my point.