Horizons Still NO Paint Jobs for the Federal Corvette! ??? WHY?

GG7 · Jun 23, 2016

A perfect example of a totally missed opportunity!

Earlier today I FINALLY reached the long sought after "Rear Admiral" rank in the Federal Navy! And considering how long, arduous and tedious this rank up process has become as of late, this was no small feat!

Of course the only tangible reason I had for even bothering to reach this milestone was the ability to purchase my favorite ship in the game...

The Federal Corvette.

I have been flying one of these great ships on my Xbox One Account since the ship was first introduced to the game, but I was really jonesing for access to the custom paint jobs that the PC version has always appeared to have in spades.

Well... What was the very first thing I did after buying the Vette from my nearest discount starport? I headed up to the Frontier store and started searching for the "Federal Corvette" off the "SHIPS" list...

What the hell? The ship isn't even listed! And the reason why the ship isn't listed is because THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE CUSTOM PAINT JOB FOR SALE!

[???]

How long has the Corvette been a part of the game now? 8 months? 10 Months?

And how many new paint jobs for the Eagle has Frontier added to the store in that same time frame? 10? 12? 20? And how many total paint jobs are there currently for sale for the Eagle? 50? 75? Its some insane number I know that! [wacky]

While I was up on the store, I couldn't help but notice that all the various paint job prices had been slashed! With "30% OFF" banners adorning the dozens of paint jobs and paint job packs for all the smaller ships.

Obviously FD is attempting to boost their sales of add-ons to existing customers. And here they have a veteran ED gamer who made the conscious decision to quit the game and load up the store with the specific intention of PURCHASING a Federal Corvette paint job package. I had my credit card out in front of me and everything! lol!

They call this kind of purchase a "LAY DOWN". A guaranteed sale that doesn't require any effort on the part of the retailer to generate. All they needed to do was to TAKE MY MONEY, by offering me A PRODUCT TO BUY!

Needless to say, once I discovered that FD hasn't bothered to produce a single custom paint job for this ship despite its popularity and the fact that it has been in the game for nearly a year, the credit card is now back in my wallet.

Wake the heck up Frontier Marketing People!

No wonder your add-on sales are down and forcing you to slash your prices by 30%! How about plugging the holes in your current offerings and dispense with the embarrassment of not offering a single add-on product for one of the more popular ships in the game? Do you think there might be a good chance that a Federal Corvette paint pack could also be the most popular and best selling paint pack on your store?

Hmmm... I wonder. We'll never know as long as you continue to snub the ship and its enthusiastic fans!

Well done Frontier! [rolleyes]

[wacko]

Some1else · Jun 23, 2016

Or Cutter,

however, you have to realize that it's about number of ships used in-game. Not many folks have Corvettes or Cutters yet. So FD isn't going to worry much about either ship.

LLaP

S1E

bitstorm · Jun 23, 2016

There are crap loads of skins, Corvette's have been there for a while, just Frontier not releasing them yet.

Code:

26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               483 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_BlackFriday
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            483 bytes
               7 Dir(s)  14,536,126,464 bytes free


26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               475 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJobModules
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_BlackFriday
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Camo
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            475 bytes
               9 Dir(s)  14,535,864,320 bytes free

Red Anders · Jun 23, 2016

inb4 Little Red Corvette jokes.

shunulu · Jun 23, 2016

bitstorm said:

There are crap loads of skins, Corvette's have been there for a while, just Frontier not releasing them yet.

Code:

26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               483 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_BlackFriday
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            483 bytes
               7 Dir(s)  14,536,126,464 bytes free


26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               475 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJobModules
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_BlackFriday
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Camo
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            475 bytes
               9 Dir(s)  14,535,864,320 bytes free

At least wonderful news about Vette's owners. Thanks for sharing

GG7 · Jun 23, 2016

bitstorm said:

There are crap loads of skins, Corvette's have been there for a while, just Frontier not releasing them yet.

Code:

26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               483 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_BlackFriday
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Federation_Corvette_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            483 bytes
               7 Dir(s)  14,536,126,464 bytes free


26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          .
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          ..
26/05/2016  20:30               475 Data.ovl
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJobModules
08/05/2016  16:44    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_BlackFriday
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Camo
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Default
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Metallic
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Tactical
26/05/2016  20:30    <DIR>          PaintJob_Cutter_Vibrant
               1 File(s)            475 bytes
               9 Dir(s)  14,535,864,320 bytes free

WOW! [woah]

Ditto on revealing this to us here!

Makes this even more of a mystery then!

I can somewhat see how the number of players who would want these would be lower due to the cost and requirements to ownership. But now having seen the above file list that reveals these skins to have already been produced and simply not released, what could possibly be the reason for continuing to hold them back?

As I said... I was ready to plunk down my $$ right then and there for these Corvette paint jobs! I wonder how many similar sales FD loses every single day by simply not bothering to make these existing products available for purchase?

The more and more time that goes by, the less and less I feel I have ANY understanding of Frontier as a company. Their management decisions are so often coming so far out of left field, that it borders on another dimensional reality level of logic, or perhaps more to the point... ILLOGIC! [wacko]

GG7 · Jun 23, 2016

Some1else said:
Or Cutter,

however, you have to realize that it's about number of ships used in-game. Not many folks have Corvettes or Cutters yet. So FD isn't going to worry much about either ship.

LLaP

S1E

As I mentioned above, I don't doubt that the raw numbers of Corvette owners as well as Cutter and other harder to buy ships would be lower, but that doesn't mean those that do own those ships would have no desire to purchase these add-ons from the store.

Could be very similar to the way Apple Macintosh sales look on paper. While many anti-Mac types like to cite the much smaller percentage of market share the Mac has over Windows... A major point they always fail to consider or account for is the fact that Mac owners HAVE MONEY! And Mac owners like to SPEND MONEY! To a far higher percentile than their Windows owning/using friends and relatives.

This has always been the case, even when you consider that Macintosh machines have double to triple the useful life expectancy of their Windows based counterparts.

Wake up Frontier!

Are you waiting for Corvette and Cutter owners to start actually waving their cash in front of your face?

Sheesh! [weird]

bitstorm · Jun 23, 2016

GG7 said:
The more and more time that goes by, the less and less I feel I have ANY understanding of Frontier as a company. Their management decisions are so often coming so far out of left field, that it borders on another dimensional reality level of logic, or perhaps more to the point... ILLOGIC! [wacko]

Well I think Frontier plan long term.

Like weve heard they are working on season 3 content even now.

Maybe this is just Braben's style, long pipelines, it is probably a good way to work I think since you get a lot of time to prototype stuff and feel out the issues.

With the skins, I'm guessing it's similar, they do a whole bunch all at once, probably when they have a free window for the graphics guys, and then drip those skins out over the long term.

As in it might be a while before they sort any more skins so it's not necessarily in their interest to release everything they've "batch" worked on as soon as it's done.

Sure folks want them now, it's just a bit frustrating when there are no skins for *your* ship, but you can see they are right there!

Alex Brentnall · Jun 23, 2016

bitstorm said:
With the skins, I'm guessing it's similar, they do a whole bunch all at once, probably when they have a free window for the graphics guys, and then drip those skins out over the long term.
As in it might be a while before they sort any more skins so it's not necessarily in their interest to release everything they've "batch" worked on as soon as it's done.
Sure folks want them now, it's just a bit frustrating when there are no skins for *your* ship, but you can see they are right there!

Could be to ensure they have income spread over the year to help their books balance the dry periods between update releases. I imagine this year so far has been quite profitable with horizons and then horizons on xbox as well as the steam sale now. Could be they are holding back in case their income dries up somewhat later in the year.

Either way after the amount of time we had to wait for the Anaconda skins I sympathise but yeah it's not unheard of. Yeah ok it's been 6 months, when it gets to 12 like the Anaconda feel free to open the flood gates, let me know and I'll grab my pitchfork and meet you there

Edit: OP - Store sale is related to the Steam sale that started today at roughly the same time.

GG7 · Jun 24, 2016

Meh... I guess you can SPIN this any as many ways as you like.

Personally, it makes absolutely no sense. Not when you have an overabundance of paint jobs for other ships, bordering on ridiculous. Followed by absolutely nothing for the Corvette and the Cutter.

If I was calling the shots, I would make sure that any new ship had skins and any other add-on that could be made available ready to go on the SAME DAY the new ship was introduced.

This is just basic marketing 101. "Strike while the iron is hot". Not a year after the fact when the newness and demand would have obviously waned over all that time.

Rather than trying to glean any brilliant strategy out of their actual decision, I think they just basically screwed up and never bothered to finish the project by connecting those stored away skins to the game mechanics.

Random Task · Jun 24, 2016

Does no one remember how long anaconda owners waited for paints? A LONG DAMN TIME! quit your whining. Get to your grind or what ever your doing and just wait like everyone before you had to.

metatheurgist · Jun 24, 2016

GG7 said:
WOW! [woah]

Ditto on revealing this to us here!

Makes this even more of a mystery then!

Not so strange, this has been their MO since the game started. Every other update they ship new skins but don't tell anyone. Then usually to go along with a big update or release, they then open those skins in the store. Anaconda skins were sitting in the files for a loooong time before they were released. I guess wait until the next big update or release.

MagicTofu · Jun 24, 2016

Sorry for being a smartypants, but the listing showed by Bitstorm shows directories for paintjobs, not files. Not saying this is irrelevant, but having not checked the content myself, for all I know, these may be empty directories created in anticipation for future actual paintjobs, or they could hold placeholder paintjob files that will be updated when the actual working versions are finalized.