Value of free-for-life expansions

[Schwarzwolf]

Your pledge matters. However, if you pull out, someone will take that £20 slot that you free up (someone who would not pay £30 or more).

You would wonder, how often a £20 went free again. I joined also long time after everything was "sold out" so few days ago.
And i saw free spots again free. Peoples tend to update the pledges on kickstarter. A thing i can't do because i don't own the credit card and the friend doesn't has much money on it.

PayPal pledges don't count towards Kickstarter. Therefore, people shouldn't use PayPal in preference to Kickstarter.

Indeed. I still waiting for the day that paypal works with kickstarter.

You are willing to pledge £115. If you do it via PayPal, you're worried it won't count. However, we've already addressed your £20 pledge - someone else will fill it. So at least if you pledge via PP, they'll have a PP balance.

Don't think it would get them anything to have a paypal balance now. If the kickstarter woudn't be funded, i don't think they will get the 1,25 million £ together with paypal. And if they don't reach the kickstarter goal, all kickstarter money would be withdrawn. Hopefully this won't happen.

No good! You can't self fund! This is true. However, it's also true that Kickstarter rarely see's £1m projects. Their commission is 5%, or £63k. If Frontier have enough PayPal pledges, KS would be insane not to allow them to add the funds.

You're right. What would speak against pledgeing the money from paypal into kickstarter? But this has to be done before the time runs out. But i am sure Elite will meet its goal. There is still the final spurt at the end of the pledge. And this should get some additional money.

 

[Zak Gordon]

I think the terms are quite clear, the KS project only can take account of the money pledged via the KS page itself, so yes ONLY use the paypal option if (like myself) you just can't use the direct CC entry system used by KS (UK).

FD have stated if the KS target is not met then they will have to refund all the paypal bids also.

Chris and his Star Citizen crowdfunding completely nailed the tactic for this, if you are chasing a big number via the overall project, use your own crowdfunding (paypal/amazon/cheque etc) alongside any KS either before or at the same time. This can also enable you to set a lower target for the KS itself. More options = more money.

It really is going to be a bumpy docking for the end of this Elite: Dangerous KS, and it might well be that we will reach (even exceed) the target with combined KS+ paypal totals, but if the KS does not reach it's specified target it won't make any difference. So yeah the KS bidding is paramount. Two weeks left to salvage it! I hope you are all strapped in and holding onto something secure!

In relation to the value of the expansions, £80(£90) is pretty cheap, even if it is only one or two in the end, as long as they are quite substantial. I suspect once i've jonty'd my bid to that level, once i have got the free expansions i will donate something extra to FD, it will depend on the quality and content a little, so i hope they aim on the more generous side rather than the less generous.

But yeah if i was sitting on a £20 or £30 bid right now AND had the spare cash, i'd be snapping these offers up, one it helps the KS a lot, and two you get free expansions/content.....forever! What's not to like?

 

[Schwarzwolf]

Star Citizen made many mistakes at start. Very bad running website, problems, etc. But after it started, he made everything right. And managed to make a fabulous crowdfunding. Indeed one of the problems from Elite: Dangerous is, that it is now directly after Star Citizen. So the space gamer already thrown all their money on Star Citizen. I have the same problem. I gave much away for Star Citizen. Without this, i would have still enough money for Elite even now. But so i have to wait after christmas. (A shame to be a student and don't have a job atm.) But for such a epic project i will scrape the money together before the pledge phase is over.

If Elite had started with the same system like Star Cititzen, it would be the question, if it would have run so good because of the empty pockets of many space gamers now.

The paypal leads me always to the same question. Can't David simply put the money from the paypal on the credit card and transfer it to kickstarter on the last day, if it woudn't reach the goal?

Ok, if it should really fail i think he should wait some month and start another crowdfunding campaign next year. Then when the fans have more money again.

 

[Capt. Hook]

I think its part of the Kickstarter rules that the project owner can't contribute to the kickstarter fund? Could be wrong about that.

That said, I suppose if the paypal money can't be used for the kickstarter fund, it's only value is to support the development of the game after the kickstarter campaign has been successful or have I got that bit wrong too?

Would be nice to see paypal amounts pledged to date incidentally.

 

[Schwarzwolf]

I think its part of the Kickstarter rules that the project owner can't contribute to the kickstarter fund? Could be wrong about that.

Ughs, thats not good. Donno why it should be forbidden but i don't really know the kickstarter rules much. I personally woudn't see anyhting speaking against the possibility to pledge the project by yourself. If you will give it the money by yourself, you would have to pay the fee to kickstarter and the project would be made. The pledger would be happy to get the thing done.

That said, I suppose if the paypal money can't be used for the kickstarter fund, it's only value is to support the development of the game after the kickstarter campaign has been successful or have I got that bit wrong too?

Thats indeed right. It would only help them after the kickstarter success. Thats also the reason the paypal amount will be used often for the stretch goals aswell. After they reached the kickstarter amount, the paypal money becomes as important as the kickstarter one. Often many projects are opening the paypal payment only after the kickstarter pledges met their goal and let it run then until a month after the campaign ends.

But if i would have to bet, i would bet on Frontier, that they get the goal. We are nearly by £900,000 and we still have 13 days left. £1,250,000 is the goal. And there will be the well known final spurt. And we have christmas. After christmas i see a large increase in the pledge amount.

And to go back to the topic, we have the lifetime updates. Until the word about this spreads, many people would update to it and we get another money stream.

 

[Harbinger]

Surely Frontier could use the PayPal funds to support the kickstarter campaigns trying to raise funding for the "writers pack" if they look to be failing. After all, each one of these adds £4500 to their own total so it makes sense not to let them fail. This way they're not directly funding their own kickstarter project.

Of course this could create problems if they have to issue PayPal refunds in the event they don't hit their £1.25m target.

 

[The Space Pirate]

I'm thoroughly confused as to why they've opened a paypal page to start with if this is the case.

 

[Capt. Hook]

I'm thoroughly confused as to why they've opened a paypal page to start with if this is the case.

One of the devs kinda answers this one when asked about paypal relevancy to kickstarter:

"At the moment PayPal totals don't count towards the Kickstarter total. We're looking at ways to do so, the PayPal option is there for people who cannot use Kickstarter's payment system. Michael"

 

[Zak Gordon]

I think probably because they realised (a little too late) it should have been there from the start, particularly in relation to usa/international bidders that might not trust a KS UK method of payment (especially as you can not find out what payment system is used etc).

Also i think they think they will make the bid total via the KS. So this is just extra revenue for the project they would not get otherwise (from folks like myself that won't use the KS UK credit card entry method). Look at Star Citizen as a prime example of how giving people more options to pay adds to the overall total etc.

I'd point you to my post about what adding Paypal at this late stage WONT do:

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=30882&postcount=21

That is cause people to use it in place of the KS method IF they are happy using that, so what adding paypal does not do, at any point, is stop people backing the KS. For example without the paypal option i would not have backed the project.

Now this also has nothing to do with the fact the KS struggled from the start, and that, all by itself, will determine if the KS makes it or not, it won't be because of the paypal option.

 

[Schwarzwolf]

Ok, now its even more worth, because it contains all of the start tiers.