When Horizons was announced earlier, I obviously got very excited.
See, planetary landings, walking out of your spaceship, everything like that is what I envisioned with this game.
I thought that finally, the day had come that we would really see this happening.
I wanted to find out more, so I googled around a bit. Then I found out that this was not just an update, no, this was an expansion to the game. And it cost £40.
Now, I thought Elite: Dangerous was expensive enough in itself. Surely, I thought, a crowd-funded game on this price-level with this little content in it, was due for free updates as time went on. Sadly, I was apparently wrong.
The game already feels empty and lacking of features that one would expect in a space sim. The mining system is worthless, exploration gets incredibly boring incredibly fast, and trading is tedius and repetetive. Even the combat seems under-developed.
What I'm trying to say is that Elite: Dangerous feels like an unfinished game, so selling it for £30 is bad enough in itself, but charging another £40 for a feature that any living person would think should be a feature in the base game is outright insulting. While you could say that they are still developing on the main game, the only major thing they've done the last months that comes to mind is adding powerplay, which nobody really cares about. Great job, Frontier. Clap clap. I wonder what they're actually doing with all the money they get from sales.
That's not even the worst part about this either. Frontier also announced the Lifetime Expansion Pass for £130. Yup, ONE-HOUDRED AND THIRTY GREAT BRITISH POUNDS. Outrageous. For content that we don't even know what is going to include yet. They even advertise it as "only" £130. No videogame costs £130. As if it's nothing compared to what all the future expansions (with bear in mind, should definetely be in the main game for free) that are eventually coming will cost individually.
The fact that Frontier thinks this is okay worries me. They don't have much of an audience from before, other than all the 30-50 year-olds that plays this game purely for nostalgic reasons, and when other games like Space Engineers, No Man's Sky, and especially Star Citizen start to come out very soon, Elite is not at all going to be able to compete without major gameplay updates in place for free.
This expansion won't even include landing on actual athmospheric planets. So before you buy this, just keep in mind that you're paying £40 for walking around on a lifeless rock. If this is what you honestly want, I reccomend find other games, even free-to-play ones, that offer this feature. Alternatively you could go outside and walk around for a bit on a rocky surface, as that is free and gives you total rock-walking immersion.
Do not buy this expansion, do not buy future expansions, and move on to a game that actually has promise, because I have given up on this one.
See, planetary landings, walking out of your spaceship, everything like that is what I envisioned with this game.
I thought that finally, the day had come that we would really see this happening.
I wanted to find out more, so I googled around a bit. Then I found out that this was not just an update, no, this was an expansion to the game. And it cost £40.
Now, I thought Elite: Dangerous was expensive enough in itself. Surely, I thought, a crowd-funded game on this price-level with this little content in it, was due for free updates as time went on. Sadly, I was apparently wrong.
The game already feels empty and lacking of features that one would expect in a space sim. The mining system is worthless, exploration gets incredibly boring incredibly fast, and trading is tedius and repetetive. Even the combat seems under-developed.
What I'm trying to say is that Elite: Dangerous feels like an unfinished game, so selling it for £30 is bad enough in itself, but charging another £40 for a feature that any living person would think should be a feature in the base game is outright insulting. While you could say that they are still developing on the main game, the only major thing they've done the last months that comes to mind is adding powerplay, which nobody really cares about. Great job, Frontier. Clap clap. I wonder what they're actually doing with all the money they get from sales.
That's not even the worst part about this either. Frontier also announced the Lifetime Expansion Pass for £130. Yup, ONE-HOUDRED AND THIRTY GREAT BRITISH POUNDS. Outrageous. For content that we don't even know what is going to include yet. They even advertise it as "only" £130. No videogame costs £130. As if it's nothing compared to what all the future expansions (with bear in mind, should definetely be in the main game for free) that are eventually coming will cost individually.
The fact that Frontier thinks this is okay worries me. They don't have much of an audience from before, other than all the 30-50 year-olds that plays this game purely for nostalgic reasons, and when other games like Space Engineers, No Man's Sky, and especially Star Citizen start to come out very soon, Elite is not at all going to be able to compete without major gameplay updates in place for free.
This expansion won't even include landing on actual athmospheric planets. So before you buy this, just keep in mind that you're paying £40 for walking around on a lifeless rock. If this is what you honestly want, I reccomend find other games, even free-to-play ones, that offer this feature. Alternatively you could go outside and walk around for a bit on a rocky surface, as that is free and gives you total rock-walking immersion.
Do not buy this expansion, do not buy future expansions, and move on to a game that actually has promise, because I have given up on this one.