News Ship naming – transmission intercepted.

[Alex Brentnall]

Elite: Dangerous was never pitched as a pay-to-win game, very much the opposite.
Selling Ship Skins, Decals, Bobbleheads and other cosmetic items in the store were always part of FD's plans to raise extra revenues.
But sure, blame the [evil] Kickstarter backers.

Not blaming, actually praising but as expected this thread went from "thanks for new information" to "we hate you" pretty fast.

Adiós all

 

[Nagual]

Really feel like i'm banging my head against a brick wall here.

Elite isn't supported by P2W micros or advertising, no, you are absolutely right.

Elite is supported by the money myself and others have ALREADY PUT DOWN.

Keep banging away! You might knock some sense in to yourself. Server costs are not going to go away anytime soon™. Yes people have paid for the game and expansions, but since the very very start of Kickstarter they said there would be paid items to help pay for the cost of running servers etc. Why is this hard to understand. You don't have to have a tiny name plate that no one will see unless they are so close you can smell their breath anyway.

 

[Juniper]

Really feel like i'm banging my head against a brick wall here.

Elite isn't supported by P2W micros or advertising, no, you are absolutely right.

Elite is supported by the money myself and others have ALREADY PUT DOWN.

Hate to break this to you, but that money is gone now. How do they pay for the servers next month or the month after?

I put over £1000 into this game through Kickstarter and the store, but I fully accept that in order for the game to continue to run, FD need to get money from existing players as well as get new ones.

If you don't want a ship hull decal, don't buy one. If you begrudge FD the money - don't buy any cosmetics at all. It's your choice. Nobody is holding a gun to your head either way.

 

[wstephenson]

I was hoping that for both (UI visible and Hull stencilling) the first rename of a newly bought ship would be free, but further ones would be paid - eg by selling blocks of five renames for $5/€5/£4.

I'll reserve judgement on how the newly revealed system works.

Frontier, will we have access to any of the new nameplate cosmetics for free in Beta?

 

[Alex Brentnall]

I was hoping that for both (UI visible and Hull stencilling) the first rename of a newly bought ship would be free, but further ones would be paid - eg by selling blocks of five renames for $5/€5/£4.

I'll reserve judgement on how the newly revealed system works.

Frontier, will we have access to any of the new nameplate cosmetics for free in Beta?

If history is anything to go by the answer is no - Weapon/engine colours & ship kits were not even though we asked.

 

[Seonid]

Frontiers server cost are minimal as they use p2p networking for players

For the clients, sure. But the back-end is anything but simple as we know from the video. What size of EC2 instance do you manage out of curiosity?

 

[Brimstone]

I have to protest the fact that ship name decals will be paid-for cosmetics.

Frontier, you recently gave us the Powerplay decals for free (after... 80+ weeks since the release of Powerplay?), and while I thank you for the generosity, I feel that those decals are nowhere near as vital and necessary as having the name of your ship painted on it's hull. I feel you are going too far with the cosmetics these days.

Why not throw us a tiny little bone here? Considering all of the set-backs in development*, why force us to pay for the decal? This is silly, honestly. Call me a salty old dog who's been around since the launch, but all of these silly little things have really piled up into a glaring issue I have with this game.

I've already dumped well over $100 USD in the base game, Horizons season pass, and various cosmetics. At this point, I highly doubt I'll be buying 'season 3' when ever that comes around, until it's heavily discounted on Steam or something.

*Initially, the Horizons season had a well defined release schedule, which was quickly scrapped due to the delay in 2.1, among other things. Had that initial schedule been kept to, we'd already be in season 3 by now.


As always, this is my opinion.

 

[The Nude Wizard]

Because free to play games are supported either by advertising or by pay to win microtransactions. Just because some choose not to charge for naming proves nothing.

All the paid for items in Elite are purely optional and cosmetic, you don't want to pay for them, fine, you don't have to. Not having a nameplate/shipkit or paint job won't detract in any way from the gameplay you've already brought and paid for.

Team fortress 2 is an example where they incentivize skin creation by pros by letting them share the profits, they get the work done to a high quality for free and everyone gets to vote and be involved in what gets aded to the game. The item marketplace of buyers and sellers now makes valve more money than selling games.

Everyone laughed when they brought in the hats, i've made a whole lot of money selling them, and never paid a dollar. They arent pay to win, theres no advertising. They're an example of doing it right. FD could follow their lead rather than seemingly make it up as they go along.

 

[Furinkazan]

Hate to break this to you, but that money is gone now. How do they pay for the servers next month or the month after?

I put over £1000 into this game through Kickstarter and the store, but I fully accept that in order for the game to continue to run, FD need to get money from existing players as well as get new ones.

If you don't want a ship hull decal, don't buy one. If you begrudge FD the money - don't buy any cosmetics at all. It's your choice. Nobody is holding a gun to your head either way.

How does any other game company fund servers? By selling games.

What is with this bizarre narrative where FD are a tiny, underfunded studio that didn't just release a second successful game, and they cannot afford to keep the servers up (P2P servers at that) without constantly nickel and diming their userbase?

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Team fortress 2 is an example where they incentivize skin creation by pros by letting them share the profits, they get the work done to a high quality for free and everyone gets to vote and be involved in what gets aded to the game. The item marketplace of buyers and sellers now makes valve more money than selling games.

Everyone laughed when they brought in the hats, i've made a whole lot of money selling them, and never paid a dollar. They arent pay to win, theres no advertising. They're an example of doing it right. ED could follow their lead rather than seemingly make it up as they go along.

Something about playerbase differences, at one time 117,917 were concurrently playing TF2.

 

[Jon flint]

I wanted extras on top, which is why i bought Horizons.

And you got the extras that Horizons brought to the game, planetary landings, SLFs and all the other content Frontier stated up front that would be available in season 2.

I could understand your annoyance if somewhere on the store page for Horizons it said "includes paint packs/shipkits and ship nameplates".

Instead, right from the Kickstarter it was decided that they would charge a fee for cosmetic items to cover costs, rather than alternatives like paying monthly fees/advertising or even paying for ships etc.

Now I'm not going to argue wether those costs are justified, nor do I know why the initial purchase price for each season isn't enough to cover all the costs. I'm just saying that we were told exactly what content we would and wouldn't get included for the price of a season up front, and right or wrong, optional cosmetic items were never part of a season.

 

[The Nude Wizard]

Something about playerbase differences, at one time 117,917 were concurrently playing TF2.

It didnt get popular because the system sucked, thats all i'd say to that.

You give people a reason to play your game for trinkets.. they will.

 

[bkrownd]

The ship name should appear in other CMDRs' displays immediately, without having to target or scan.

Don't care about a cosmetic decal - absolutely nobody is going to get close enough to read that.

And PLEASE make Asp-X and DBS bobbleheads already! I'm not putting an anaconda bobblehead on my DBS dashboard!

 

[Alex Brentnall]

It didnt get popular because the system sucked, thats all i'd say to that.

You give people a reason to play your game for trinkets.. they will.

No it went popular because it conformed to a standard basis of arena shooter that some games have been copy/pasting for years. Different genres. Also once it suckered tons of people into pay for it then it went free to play and gave the existing players minimal recompense. Easy way to boost numbers for the following cosmetics spree.

Tl: dr - It was popular before it started the system so the system isn't the root cause.

 

[horizone]

I think it is good there are payment involved for external name plates. It should get rid of most of the stupid name calling or swear words on the outside of ships that it would be used for by irresponsible players.

Something you pay for, you are a little less likely to abuse. There might even be a rule that you will loose your nameplate (and your £2) if you are using it irresponsibly. At least I hope so because I want to see cool names, not ascii-art, memes and dirty smileys.

In this way Frontier will have a record of who they need to monitor, instead of monitoring every single ship name.

Maybe something like that. Just guessing alot here.

 

[Jon flint]

The only thing I hope for with ship names is a good solid swear filter!

 

[Alex Brentnall]

The only thing I hope for with ship names is a good solid swear filter!

Maybe thats why they are charged because of the Dev time it takes for them to remove all the children we will be reporting for being lewd/offensive?

 

[Wobblin-Gobblin]

Great news, thank you for this [up]

BTW: 'Starscream' is reserved for my ASPX

 

[Lianachan]

I have to protest the fact that ship name decals will be paid-for cosmetics.

Frontier, you recently gave us the Powerplay decals for free (after... 80+ weeks since the release of Powerplay?), and while I thank you for the generosity, I feel that those decals are nowhere near as vital and necessary as having the name of your ship painted on it's hull. I feel you are going too far with the cosmetics these days.

Why not throw us a tiny little bone here? Considering all of the set-backs in development*, why force us to pay for the decal? This is silly, honestly. Call me a salty old dog who's been around since the launch, but all of these silly little things have really piled up into a glaring issue I have with this game.

I've already dumped well over $100 USD in the base game, Horizons season pass, and various cosmetics. At this point, I highly doubt I'll be buying 'season 3' when ever that comes around, until it's heavily discounted on Steam or something.

*Initially, the Horizons season had a well defined release schedule, which was quickly scrapped due to the delay in 2.1, among other things. Had that initial schedule been kept to, we'd already be in season 3 by now.


As always, this is my opinion.

Yup, this is ridiculous. I'd joked about how we'd probably have to pay to have the names on the ship. Pathetic.

 

[DavidBroobin]

I call dibs on the "The Flying MUG!"