So, we're actually on schedule?

As much as I wish otherwise, I found an actual statement from David Braben about that. Like many, I'd missed it at the time, because Frontier's original timeline was five paid for expansions over a period of ten years.

So their intent at the time was to go full EA sports with this game, charging AAA prices for yearly upgrades, not matter how minor:

If Frontier had actually kept to this plan, on top of paying $60 for Dangerous and $45 for Horizons, we would've also payed $45 for Horizons 2.4, another $45 for Beyond, $45 for the new player update, $45 for the upcoming Fleet Carriers, and so on. And, of course, and extra $15 each year if you wanted access to the beta. :rolleyes: Needless to say, at some point sanity returned, and they've gone back to their original plan, which was paid for major expansions, only this time they're releasing it all at once, rather than spreading it out over two years.

That's a pricing estimate not a declaration of DLC numbers. The five expansions bit doesn't exist.

One thing it does prove is that the people who melted down about Horizons price didn't pay attention to what FDEV tried to tell them.

As you said though the pricing model was their intention at the time, so taking it to be a concrete promise would be foolish.

Wait and see.
 
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I've probably got more hours in Civ V (2010) and LoTRO (2007) than ED.
The only other game that comes close to my 9800+hrs on the ED gameclock would be Ogame.
But Ogame is a free to play, though pay to win (really a pay to gain a massive advantage) game. I'd played that for around 10 years.....but not in the same galaxy server. I'd restart many times when a new galaxy server opened, as would nearly everyone else!

ED was the first game I bought since X3, I'd lost interest in paying for games many years ago.
Sadly, games that I've bought since including JWE, NMS, Subnatica, X4...have given me only a limited time of enjoyment & not much value for money. Even Space Engineers is reaching it's end for me, but ED has always been my goto game since it launched.
 
That's a pricing estimate not a declaration of DLC numbers. The five expansions bit doesn't exist.

One thing it does prove is that the people who melted down about Horizons price didn't pay attention to what FDEV tried to tell them.

As you said though the pricing model was their intention at the time, so taking it to be a concrete promise would be foolish.

Wait and see.

Read the actual posts from David Braden and Michael Brookes. For years I assumed the “season = year” assumption by the Horizons LEP holders was ungrounded in reality. I assumed that it came from Horizons being released a year after ED’s release, despite Frontier’s proverbial ten year plan with five major DLCs.

I was wrong. David Braben’s post was pretty clear about Frontier moving ED to an EA sports pricing model, and after a huge thread of people trying to get clarification from FD, Michael Brookes finally gave a definitive answer.

It’s okay to be wrong. I was wrong. There was a brief period where FD started imitating EA. Unfortunately, a LEP was offered during this period. Thankfully, sanity was restored. But refusing to acknowledge this actually happened is not conductive to meaningful discourse.
 
Read the actual posts from David Braden and Michael Brookes. For years I assumed the “season = year” assumption by the Horizons LEP holders was ungrounded in reality. I assumed that it came from Horizons being released a year after ED’s release, despite Frontier’s proverbial ten year plan with five major DLCs.

I was wrong. David Braben’s post was pretty clear about Frontier moving ED to an EA sports pricing model, and after a huge thread of people trying to get clarification from FD, Michael Brookes finally gave a definitive answer.

It’s okay to be wrong. I was wrong. There was a brief period where FD started imitating EA. Unfortunately, a LEP was offered during this period. Thankfully, sanity was restored. But refusing to acknowledge this actually happened is not conductive to meaningful discourse.

You seem to have failed to source the "five expansions" bit, again.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
I was wrong. David Braben’s post was pretty clear about Frontier moving ED to an EA sports pricing model, and after a huge thread of people trying to get clarification from FD, Michael Brookes finally gave a definitive answer.

I do not think the answer is definitive at all, unless you prefer to twist the actual words a bit. Braben text is mostly concerned about pricing and value for money. Some of Brookes posts in that thread simply state what the vanilla season represents in terms of content, slightly inacurate at that since he refers in one of his posts to 1.4 and ignores 1.5. 1.4 was actually released in October and therefore if we understand the text as you do seasons would then be supposed to last only 10 months (?). If I was to be a bit cheeky we could say that by admission he actually even conceded the possibility that horizons could eventually last 18 months :p (which, funilly enough, was not too far from target) as the question to him posited. That question btw was also about pricing anyways, and not duration. He is also pretty clear about what is to be paid: You pay the content, and not an annual subscription irrespective of content as you seem to suggest. If you think those 2 answers appear to be in conflict the best arbiter would be actual track record, and pay for content (not for annual subscriptions) is what we have had so far with Horizons and also what is has been announced for new era.

All in all you will be hard press to find any statements from FDEV that definitely confirm a season with a very precise and specific time span. For good measure, even Horizons was not stated a duration; and even if it had had with a "winter" reference for 2.4 (which it didnt) we would have had a 14-15 month season... not a year, not a 10 monts, but a 14-15 months one. Each season or DLC has been, and most likely is going to be, different, both in duration and prices. As you can see, the duration references are all over the place (with a range of +/- 50% between some of them!!) precisely because there was no exact measure and FDEV never seemed to commit to a specific one. And to top it up of course there is no words about the eventual time between end of a season and the start of the next. Never a reference that subsequent seasons / DLC (paid or otherwise) would have to be back to back... etc.

At any rate it is also key to keep in mind that the Horizons roadmap and Braben posts came only 4-5 months after Horizons was unveiled at Gamescom & the LEP was sold for the last time.
 
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You seem to have failed to source the "five expansions" bit, again.
Here you go:

We do intend to release small, free updates after launch, but expansions that include significant new features and content will be charged for separately. For example, our current roadmap is to add (in no particular order):

  • Landing/ driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
  • Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
  • Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports
  • Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
  • Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players


Edit:

Yes! I owe myself a cookie! :) Wait... I’m trying to lose my winter weight early this year, so no cookie for me. :(
 
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Wow, that is so long ago.

But still, the 1st point could be covered by Horizons and the 5th part could be argued being Fleet Carriers. If the rumours are to believed, then New Era would cover points 2 and 3. Which would leave just point 4. That would be the hardest to do. Imagine modelling a scientifically accurately dynamic atmospheric* worlds and then add some meaningful gameplay to it.

Big Ask!

* Missed out an important world
 
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Here you go:




Edit:

Yes! I owe myself a cookie! :) Wait... I’m trying to lose my winter weight early this year, so no cookie for me. :(

That's not expansion numbers, its an incomplete and now outdated list of stuff they'd like to do presented in bullet point form. You are confusing newsletter formatting with an official announcement of the number of DLC seasons.

The only really significant word in it is "current" which proves we were warned plans change even way back then.

So I can see where you've gone wrong, but its not proof of five expansions.
 
Sadly, games that I've bought since including JWE, NMS, Subnatica, X4...have given me only a limited time of enjoyment & not much value for money. Even Space Engineers is reaching it's end for me, but ED has always been my goto game since it launched.

Can only agree with this (except for the value for money - I've no complaints there). I've bought and played all those except X4, and enjoyed all of them. But even in NMS I tend to only go back after each update, and then I'll move on after some tens of hours (which is fine - I've still got more than my money's worth out of the game). But E: D... It's a game that I dip in and out of continually. I guess one of the reasons is that there is no storyline per se. With NMS, Subnautica, JWE, things become dull once you've completed the storyline(s). I might dip back in for an hour or two once complete, or (as in the case of JWE) play the storyline through again on another platform (which I did when it came to Gamepass for XBox). But compared to the thousands of hours I've put into E: D, no other game comes close.
 
You could also argue 4 was Horizons ... so basically once we have New Era then fdev are done with all 5 'expansions' that were in that list ... excellent - an end to these debates is in sight!

Sorry, I forgot to put the word atmospherics in regarding point 4. To be honest, atmospheric worlds would be the last part before fdev could say job done (that includes scooping from gas Giants).
 
Keep in mind that there's potentially a gulf of difference between "technically in the game" ticking of boxes, and, "implemented in a satisfactory, stable, cohesive fashion."
True, that's why I don't understand all the outrage about the FC delay. The more time they put into it, the better it will probably be... Sure, some people will complain anyway because it only has 8 out of 10 potential features.
 
That just all seems like a bit much to me
Really? Seems to be something a well-funded professional game development studio should be able to accomplish in a couple of years. At least one if not both.

it’s not some indie start-up in Braben’s garage. I think we can and should expect something groundbreaking on the scale of space legs in the big 2020 update. Otherwise what the blazes have they been doing with all this money/payroll hours.
 
Really? Seems to be something a well-funded professional game development studio should be able to accomplish in a couple of years. At least one if not both.

There's another rather better funded apparently professional game development studio that has consistently proved you wrong. And I can't think of any others...
 
True, that's why I don't understand all the outrage about the FC delay. The more time they put into it, the better it will probably be... Sure, some people will complain anyway because it only has 8 out of 10 potential features.
Why, that would be intolerable 🤬 only 8 out of 10,000...*

Same questions came up on today's Let's Play, fielded very well by Will too :)

( * corrected for dramatic effect)
 
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