Should Elite Dangerous move towards a free to play model?

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
The game is practically free to play as it is. You can pick up the base game on sale for what? $10? After that you (in theory) don't need to give FD another penny, ever, depending on what you want.

Grab Horizons on sale for another $10? Super!

Next paid expansion comes out, wait a year, grab that on sale! Sorted!

As long as free to play doesn't mean pay to win and all the usual garbage that comes along with F2P, FD can do whatever.
 

Genar-Hofoen

Genar-Hofoen
Sylow said:
What shocking revelation, that they only make have plans (or not have plans for something), but can not completely rule out things to happen in the future, if the need arises. Perhaps the game remains strong till 2035. Perhaps SC actually at some time releases and ED has to take new steps to keep their player base.

Only time will tell, as my crystal ball for some reason doesn't.
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Condescension, much? And all for what was intended to be a little bit of mischief and humourous flippancy - hence the smiley at the end of the post. Hope you enjoyed the time you wasted in your reply - talk about WHOOSH! ;)
 

Sylow

Sylow
Genar-Hofoen said:
Condescension, much? And all for what was intended to be a little bit of mischief and humourous flippancy - hence the smiley at the end of the post. Hope you enjoyed the time you wasted in your reply - talk about WHOOSH! ;)
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Hmm, yes. :D

Also aye, i saw the smiley and was pondering it a bit. But it felt too much like like a "doomed, if not now then later" posting to me.
 

[VR] M4st0d0n

[VR] M4st0d0n
Agony_Aunt said:
The game is practically free to play as it is. You can pick up the base game on sale for what? $10? After that you (in theory) don't need to give FD another penny, ever, depending on what you want.

Grab Horizons on sale for another $10? Super!

Next paid expansion comes out, wait a year, grab that on sale! Sorted!

As long as free to play doesn't mean pay to win and all the usual garbage that comes along with F2P, FD can do whatever.
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Well technicaly, once outside starter system, regardless of skill, one commander having access to the engineer fighting the other from vanilla Elite will win most of the time.

So it can qualify as pay to win as well.
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
IndigoWyrd said:
It use to be. It was called Arena, and no one played, and it was discontinued.
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Pretty sure it was never free to play. It retailed at $7.49.

A free listing with a big promotional push is something I'm pretty sure they've never tried. (But given the costs involved in the listing + promotion, and the odds that it still might not get traction, can see why they don't :/)
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Commander Royle said:
In summer 2020 we are expecting a big new DLC, the size of which we have not seen since Horizons. Possible space legs and base building if the rumours are correct. Therefore we can probably expect frontier to sell this for £20-30, which is essentially the price of a new game.
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Expect £40 at launch for new buyers. That's what Horizons was.

And if it sells ok, expect that to continue to be their primary business model ;)
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
M4st0d0n said:
Well technicaly, once outside starter system, regardless of skill, one commander having access to the engineer fighting the other from vanilla Elite will win most of the time.

So it can qualify as pay to win as well.
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Yes, Horizons can be seen to be pay to win, and i hope with the release of the new season they will roll Horizons into the base game.
 

Arioch

Arioch
Golgot said:
Pretty sure it was never free to play. It retailed at $7.49.

A free listing with a big promotional push is something I'm pretty sure they've never tried. (But given the costs involved in the listing + promotion, and the odds that it still might not get traction, can see why they don't :/)
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July 2016, Arena was free for several days and was yours-to-keep if you got it during that promotional period.

It was fairly widely reported in the gaming press at the time. And you are right about the odds on it not getting traction, it didn’t.
 

CMDR Yates

C
I predict we might see the base game permanently dropped to a super-budget price (less than £5) after the next update comes out. And I suspect Horizons will be withdrawn as an independent product, and bundled into the 2020 update (not the base game) for new purchasers. Horizons is already pretty game changing, and if the next update really is a huge addition, it would make good business sense to keep the base game as a cheap "demo" to coax more people into buying a more complete game.

I don't see it going completely free to play, though, judging by Frontier's own comments on the matter.
 

space voyager

space voyager
Thinking about it... With Steam deals etc., Elite already is almost free-to-play. This should force FD to develop more paid hugely cool content.

Crap, did I just disclose my evil masterplan? DOH!
 

lenna

lenna
Midian Cabal said:
Why would they change the working business model? That would be just silly.
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Well, depending precisely on how Arx works they may have already done that. The accumulation of Arx by just playing the game may wreck the micro-transaction store model - depending on the Arx price of cosmetics and the nominal rate of accumulation of Arx credit.

I would guess 1 Arx credit per hr and 1 Arx credit being equivalent to 0.01 UKP (or perhaps less) in current real-money store terms. On that basis, it will probably barely make a dent in their earnings if Arx credit is also purchasable.

However, on the topic of the OP - No, I do not think ED should move to a completely free to play model. However, I do believe PC based CMDRs should be able to create multiple CMDRs for free like their console counterparts can.
 
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Midian Cabal

Midian Cabal
rlsg said:
Well, depending precisely on how Arx works they may have already done that. The accumulation of Arx by just playing the game may wreck the micro-transaction store model - depending on the Arx price of cosmetics and the nominal rate of accumulation of Arx credit.

I would guess 1 Arx credit per hr and 1 Arx credit being equivalent to 0.01 UKP (or perhaps less) in current real-money store terms. On that basis, it will probably barely make a dent in their earnings if Arx credit is also purchasable.

However, on the topic of the OP - No, I do not think ED should move to a completely free to play model. However, I do believe PC based CMDRs should be able to create multiple CMDRs for free like their console counterparts can.
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Microtransactions are only a minor source of revenue generation.

They won't make multiple CMDRs available for free either, because that's much bigger source or revenue generation.

If they'd make CMDR slots available at a discounted price, I'd be very grateful.
 

Dommarraa

Dommarraa
Percieved value:
If you pay a weeks disposal wealth on a new game, you invest effort in learning the foibles and push through any beginning issues.
If you spend nothing on a new game, unless it hits you in the face as indisputable fun, it gets uninstalled within the hour.

That's not me, that's real life.

Ed is not now, nor will it ever be suitable as a low investment game.
 

Thalinor

T
No. Please no. You should fix the game. Make ships unique instead of just progression. Actually take the time to change cockpits around in ships like the asp/diamondback/krait which have two models each that have the exact same cockpits. Fix power play so it’s actually engaging. Do something with the Thargoids.

I was going to make en entire post about this but this thread will work. Ask the community for help. It costs you nothing. Elite is a special game where the community is far different than most. Groups like the fuel rats prove this and make this game very unique. People actually try and help beach other vs other games.

You should ask the community for help with minor development stuff to offset the costs. Stuff like graphic design. Offer frontier points, free copies of the game, and free dlc expansions, name in credits, or whatever, in return for community members taking some of the work load off your plate. For example, gaseous planets look ugly as sin. I’ve heard other planets have gotten a graphical refresh, and gaseous are on the todo list. Offer community members with the skills to make good looking textures incentives to work as freelancers. I’m not a graphic artist or I would offer to do it for nothing more than a few frontier points. Coding is on you, but graphical stuff can be outsourced. Ship models can be outsourced. Hell even plot can be outsourced as there are plenty of talented fan fiction writers out there who I’m sure would be love to be a part in making the game better. No other game developers I know have reached out to the community for help, and it’s stupid NOT TO. The people who play your game do so because they want to, not because they are being forced. Elites players take that even further, and help each other, even when it’s due to ones own stupidity like running out of fuel.

You just need to keep control and lead (don’t let the community lead the effort, you lead and ask for suggestions, outsource minor work like graphic textures, etc). It shouldn’t become a community run game but you can offload a lot of the workload to the community which I’m sure would be glad to help.

Engagement. You need engagement. Put up polls to see what players want in the game. Ask for suggestions on content before you decide on a direction forward. Did players really want carriers? I don’t know. I would have liked more ground vehicles and more planet content. I see a lot of others asking for a fix for power play to make it worth their time.

Ask people instead of being arrogant enough to think that you always know best; people don’t have to be playing this game, there are others. Engage your player basis, get feedback, actually respond to that feed back, have discussions (not one sided “our way or the highway”) and plan a clear path forward, then follow through and don’t half bake stuff.

If you need money, having the paid cosmetic market works, but having a way to earn cosmetic credits is a must too. You can also outsource those cosmetics to the community, maybe offer a small portion of every paid sale to the content creator.

Push out your new player experience and then offer a free trial! Let people download the full version of the game, run the tutorials, and have fun in the starter system but not leave that system until they pay to upgrade to the full version. Trials don’t exist anymore and IMO it’s because most games suck so bad they know you won’t buy it after playing the trial. Elite is a good game, you just need to finish some half baked portions, update some ships, fix some textures, and you will have a good base game to build on moving forward. I promise if you offer a free trial (including PS/Xbox) AFTER getting the new player experience set up, you can get new people to play.

Please don’t go free to play. Christ that ruins every paid game. I’m a nobody, and just one person, but I’d stop playing.

If you have to go free to play (as in you are going bankrupt) than existing paid customers should get grandfathered into not having any free to play content paywalls. Ever.
 
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