Also some are discussing that it'll cost Frontier to make, and yes it will, but don't feel any sympathy for Frontier: a) They are a very profitable company b) Elite Dangerous is still a very profitable product for them (I would even argue their most profitable) and c) They could make a lot more money from Elite Dangerous but don't maximise their income.
What would you pay for ship interiors?
- Thread starter Aerendyl
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i would love interiors and if i had gotten the game for a few quid in a sale then i would absolutely throw a few bones their way for cosmetics. I have had way more value out of the game than the price it is often sold it.
BUT for me the answer is zero, as i already dumped a lot more money into the game at initial backing on the basis of all the cool stuff they wanted to add but only if they got enough money.
so in my view i have already paid for this stuff, and was marketed with ships already designed with ship interiors in mind in a later DLC.
Personally i dont really want them delievered in a cosmetic kind of way anyway - but much prefer as part of a paid expansion.... but either way IF they come i would expect to have them already
ship interiors need to have some gameplay associated with them imo to make them shine.............. i am not against decorating my personal space as well (icing on the cake) but i want some utility to the spaces as well..... repairs, or hiding valuble stuff or boarding npc ships / being boarded by npcs and fighting them.
BUT for me the answer is zero, as i already dumped a lot more money into the game at initial backing on the basis of all the cool stuff they wanted to add but only if they got enough money.
so in my view i have already paid for this stuff, and was marketed with ships already designed with ship interiors in mind in a later DLC.
Personally i dont really want them delievered in a cosmetic kind of way anyway - but much prefer as part of a paid expansion.... but either way IF they come i would expect to have them already
ship interiors need to have some gameplay associated with them imo to make them shine.............. i am not against decorating my personal space as well (icing on the cake) but i want some utility to the spaces as well..... repairs, or hiding valuble stuff or boarding npc ships / being boarded by npcs and fighting them.
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I already have a spaceship game with some interiors, npc crews, eva capability, commerce, station building, aliens, etc., etc., etc..
And it even has the largest extension/expansion to date coming this year to boot! (beta already released to players for testing)
And the best part regarding this update is that it's free!
(so I guess the short answer is: Nothing)
And it even has the largest extension/expansion to date coming this year to boot! (beta already released to players for testing)
And the best part regarding this update is that it's free!
(so I guess the short answer is: Nothing)
I don't see the point, considering people will simply ban others from getting inside and / then start wishing for NPCs.
So I'd pay nothing and cross my arms.
So I'd pay nothing and cross my arms.
is there something wrong wishing for NPC's?
All those nay sayers - "no i don't want ship interiors", wth it's like saying they don't want jam on toast.
Of course ship interiors would be great. Of course I would want mechanics to go with them (actually working on my own ship, inside cargo bay combat, enhancing ship performance in the short run, etc. etc.).
Would I pay extra? I paid for Odyssey, of course I would pay for a ship interior expansion (even if it was just for the largest vessels bridges or was tied exclusively to cargo compartments and the engine room. )
Whoever says they don't want more features and mechanics...? Really?
These are those people:
Of course ship interiors would be great. Of course I would want mechanics to go with them (actually working on my own ship, inside cargo bay combat, enhancing ship performance in the short run, etc. etc.).
Would I pay extra? I paid for Odyssey, of course I would pay for a ship interior expansion (even if it was just for the largest vessels bridges or was tied exclusively to cargo compartments and the engine room. )
Whoever says they don't want more features and mechanics...? Really?
These are those people:
NPCs inside your ship are pointless, just as (IMO) station interiors are pointless. The reason being they are simply Metaverse like layers of the UI rather than actually doing something dynamic.
An NPC inside a ship can be done by seeing them sit, as well as expanding their stats so you have a buff / debuff on certain critical aspects of the ship. Don't need any more than that, other than maybe having them as an on foot squad.
What is a better way?
I see your point but I'm not sure about your conclusion, Odyssey brought quite a decent amount of new assets that look a lot better than the old Horizons era stuff placed throughout the appropriate parts of the galaxy by the thousands, as well as an overhaul of all the ships in the game. CIG have only one egg in their basket and without stuff to work on their environment team would be doing nothing, I would imagine that for Frontier, any team with nothing to do gets moved onto other projects and, with the focus on narrative, it's possible that they did a reasonable job with what they had, given resources, rather than going all out and replacing all Horizons assets, which I would love to see btw, but probably not happening any time soon. However, I would be surprised that there will be nothing forthcoming during the Odyssey season/narrative event. If it's going to be Thargoids on foot, then it's also plausible that all energy has been put into modeling those assets instead.
That's certainly true, but not enough that they can afford to have Elite Dangerous cost a few million pounds more than it brings in each year on a permanent basis. They're still a company, not a "provision of Elite Dangerous" charity with a side business in profitable games to fund it. It's not about sympathy for them - it's about having reasonable expectations for what a for-profit business will do.
There wouldn't be a cash problem with them developing another Odyssey-scale ED expansion if they were sure it would be profitable in the long run, because they could easily cross-subsidise it from other games / existing cash reserves, yes. But they do still have to be reasonably confident it'll be profitable in the long run, because they didn't get to be a very profitable company by consistently picking loss-makers. And that means either "every existing semi-regular player is highly likely to buy it at or near full price" or "it'll bring in a very substantial number of new players/returning players" or "it'll sell a ridiculous amount of cosmetics": that was the expectation for Odyssey, and it came a very long way from working out.
Smaller Beyond-scale developments I do expect them to continue with for quite a while because that does and likely will remain profitable for them.
Nowhere near their most profitable [1] by any conventional measure I can see.
In terms of lifetime profit (revenue - direct costs) Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster and Jurassic 1 are all higher despite being younger.
In terms of just the last year's profit all of those are still higher, plus Jurassic 2 also beats it.
Even in terms of revenue brought in - ignoring costs entirely - Jurassic 1 is still ahead on the lifetime measure, and Jurassic 2 and Planet Zoo are ahead on an "at the same age" measure.
Last 12 months: £2M profit on £6M revenue, which is good for its age but not exactly "very profitable" in absolute terms.
By doing what? What could they plausibly do to get, say, a consistent extra £5 million / year profit from the game so that they can fund permanent development at Horizons/Odyssey levels of staff?
(For scale, that's something like an extra £10/year on average from every existing semi-regular player, or an extra 250-500k sales each year, on top of what they already get)
[1] Source data all from https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-...rontier_FY23_Interim_Results_presentation.pdf - which is I think the first time they've done a public version of that graph which has included ED at all.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
This, I'd happily pay full DLC price on my 3 non-LEP accounts, but only after confirming the release is not like Odyssey DLC on my main LEP account.
My feeling is that there's a development budget funded through direct earnings that has to hit a certain threshold before Frontier will commit to something substantial, and as we all know, Odyssey is having to dig out of an earnings rut, hence possibly the current situation. If only Frontier figured out how to sell multi thousand dollar jpegs to people on a premise of 'soon, but game development is hard, and it's a space game so we're talking astronomical definitions of soon here', then we could have zillions of ships, interiors and all, or at least jpegs of them..
Is there any gameplay in ship interiors in X4?
I'm not particularly for or against ship interiors, like I wasn't for or against space legs; I won't really be able to judge if I enjoy the idea until I get my hands on it. It's not something I particularly want right now, but I probably won't be upset if Frontier decide to work on it either. And it could even end up that the game ends up feeling incomplete without them, like with Odyssey's ability to disembark.
But if ship interiors are a purely cosmetic thing with no additional gameplay, though, then I'd rather Frontier not bother and work on features that add gameplay instead, especially given that adding ship interiors seems like it'd involve a fair amount of engineering effort that could be better spent elsewhere.
If there is gameplay then it's different - I might pay for it as it'd probably a DLC like Horizons or Odyssey at that point, but of course what the fair price would be depends on the amount of content in that DLC. And at that point there'd definitely be ARX cosmetics to customise the interiors, but I'd hope the interiors themselves and any gameplay associated would be part of the DLC.
Regardless it's not a feature I'm particularly interested in or particularly against.
But if ship interiors are a purely cosmetic thing with no additional gameplay, though, then I'd rather Frontier not bother and work on features that add gameplay instead, especially given that adding ship interiors seems like it'd involve a fair amount of engineering effort that could be better spent elsewhere.
If there is gameplay then it's different - I might pay for it as it'd probably a DLC like Horizons or Odyssey at that point, but of course what the fair price would be depends on the amount of content in that DLC. And at that point there'd definitely be ARX cosmetics to customise the interiors, but I'd hope the interiors themselves and any gameplay associated would be part of the DLC.
Regardless it's not a feature I'm particularly interested in or particularly against.
No, this thread is asking if people would support cosmetic ship interiors, just like they support cosmetic ship exteriors. "They should do it for free" is obviously not affordable, or they would already be doing it.
Ship interiors would be handcrafted but your example is more in relation to general building interiors and I think, if anything, that's something that could be on whole easier to implement using a comprehensive base asset set tied to procedural generation. It can be seen somewhat with the Matrix city demo for Unreal 5, though I don't believe the buildings are all fully populated with rooms. But in essence, and without considering the resource overhead, it would be possible to make a Coriolis station fully explorable with apartment buildings and everything using procgen. Sure it would be repetitive but that's not stopped most town/shopping mall architects since WW2.. Once the layout has been built, it could be applied to every other Coriolis station with its own roll of rooms, each with their own address and NPC mission giver/target that could live there, or be ready to rent out to any willing CMDR who wants to have a place to retire to.
What do you mean by that? As in, I don't understand your response. Pure cosmetics I thought (in different words) I said yes...