Will lack of subscription kill Elite?

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Im scared that I have spend like 2 weeks just trading, not really enjoying the space combat.
Then just as I get my Python or Anaconda they stop the servers.

How about making a small mistake and losing everything, weeks of progress gone *poof*, like we've seen happen to many posters here. This game doesn't lend itself well to the playstyle of people who just want to enjoy space like in the original games. No save file to reload, should you mess up big-time, makes you vulnerable to losing everything. Some people will tell you that is fun, personally I don't think it is. But in the end that's the game we got.
 
Exactly the opposite in my opinion. Anything remotely resembling a subscription will most likely drive me away in anger.

There are plenty of ways for Frontier to make an income from Elite that allows people to choose when and how much to pay, and what to spend that money on.
 
How about making a small mistake and losing everything, weeks of progress gone *poof*, like we've seen happen to many posters here. This game doesn't lend itself well to the playstyle of people who just want to enjoy space like in the original games. No save file to reload, should you mess up big-time, makes you vulnerable to losing everything. Some people will tell you that is fun, personally I don't think it is. But in the end that's the game we got.

Frankly, I would pay RL money to be able to skip the grinding for better ships and just play the combat-oriented portions.
 
If this game goes subscription, I'm uninstalling it.
Dumbest crap ever. Terrible idea. Incase OP hasn't noticed, unless your game is super popular, subscriptions reduce your total players. That's why a lot of MMOs go F2P. SWTOR doubled its monthly revenue when it switch to F2P.
Also, ED isn't a conventual MMO and I hope it never turns into one.

Dumbest crap ever is vowing to uninstall something in a vacuum of any idea what the economic proposition is.

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Oboy, everyone must have gotten Doom Thread Makers for Christmas!

Actually I think everyone got lazy incorrect thread summarisation.
 
Most P2P games are ultimately forced into a F2P/B2P model unless they are truly great. I think a P2P model would be disastrous for Elite in its current state. Especially considering the clients are hosting the game, a P2P model would be a new height of greed in video gaming. If they'd gone for a more traditional server based model and had a much more finished game, then it might have worked.

And no, I don't hate the game. It has a good core with lots of potential (flying and combat is a joy), but it needs a lot of meat on it. It takes a lot of effort to keep people paying a monthly sub.
 
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Frankly, I would pay RL money to be able to skip the grinding for better ships and just play the combat-oriented portions.

And I would probably, while putting my pride aside, pay Frontier another ten bucks to let me play the offline, single player game I initially thought I bought - and buy expansion content. At this point I am not spending any amount, however small, on this game.

Lots of different ways for Frontier to make additional money, but everybody seems to want different things that are mutually exclusive given the current game design.
 
I have voiced similar concerns. But it is too late to go the subscription route now, so Frontier will need to focus on getting paid expansions out and creating more purchasable content via the store. Am surprised at the lack of purchasable customization content available on th store right now, for example. No paint jobs for anything larger than a Cobra? And just 2 paint jobs for Cobras? They should ideally have hundreds of paint jobs on offer for every ship, not to mention decals etc. This could help make up for the lack of subscription fees but it needs to become a priority ASAP so that they start creating major revenue streams that go beyond the initial purchase price of the game.

Edit: many of the demographic polls suggest that the bulk of Elite gamers are in their 30s and 40s, which is probably unusual. The vast majority probably have reasonably well-paying jobs with plenty of disposable income, and are just looking for excuses to spend more money on the game w/ Frontier. Frontier needs to sell more "stuff"!

Thanks for one reasonable reply in 5 pages.
 
If they went subscription or two tier gaming as some have hinted at i.e. "Buying ships and upgrades for real cash" I would have to stop playing not out of spite but as a simple economical choice, I don't have the cash to throw down a gaming black hole every month or to pay "by the hour".

At the end of the day if Fdev decide that's the way they want to go I'm totally fine with that but I'll just move on and play another game simple....
 
While it's too late to go the subscription route, what many fail to realize is that with a subscription model you need just a fraction of the player base to keep the game going. Of course, the ratio of players you can afford to keep vs lose varies depending on the price charged and related stickiness, but it's easy to make 1:5-7 economics work. I.e. Wave goodbye to 5-7 players for every one that stays and pays the fee for a good amount of time. It doesn't matter that some will leave - it matters more who will stay and how much they will pay. Again, a moot point as FD aren't going down this route. They need find other ways to add recurring revenues as said earlier - through purchasable additional content.

Edit: if I were David Braben I would, in all likelihood, have made ED a subscription model UNLESS my marketing/finance group could have persuasively proved that I could make more money with purchasable content. If the latter was the case I would be ALL over this in preparation for release and the weeks shortly following release.
 
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This game doesn't cost that much to keep the remote servers up. They use Amazon EC2's which are super cheap, and the actual game is Peer-to-peer. If they had a dedicated server set up then yes it would make a bit more sense to have some kind of subscription model. However as a peer to peer application, a subscription model would definitely drive me away which would make me sad. But after play and paying for WoW from launch until the end of WoTLK I am done paying subscription fees for games. It's just not worth it for me anymore. I'd wait for the next buy once and play when I want free space game.
 
If they went subscription or two tier gaming as some have hinted at i.e. "Buying ships and upgrades for real cash" I would have to stop playing not out of spite but as a simple economical choice, I don't have the cash to throw down a gaming black hole every month or to pay "by the hour".

At the end of the day if Fdev decide that's the way they want to go I'm totally fine with that but I'll just move on and play another game simple....

Yes, but that other game will probably cost you more than 5£ for 100 hours of play.

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This game doesn't cost that much to keep the remote servers up. They use Amazon EC2's which are super cheap, and the actual game is Peer-to-peer. If they had a dedicated server set up then yes it would make a bit more sense to have some kind of subscription model. However as a peer to peer application, a subscription model would definitely drive me away which would make me sad. But after play and paying for WoW from launch until the end of WoTLK I am done paying subscription fees for games. It's just not worth it for me anymore. I'd wait for the next buy once and play when I want free space game.

Its not about keeping the servers up, its about getting the revenue to create the 1000+ hour game I see in the potential for in ED. Its seems totally reasonable to me to pay more than 40£ for a game that I play that long.
 
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+1 Katkon on FD dropping the ball on merchandising. They should have pages of different stuff to buy. If they offered a keychain with a little gold Cobra on it I'd buy it right now :D
 
Will lack of subscription kill Elite Dangerous? No, I don't think so.

If the game will likely die due to lack of continued financial support, then can/will the current base that enjoys the game support it with a monthly subscription? Some would, some wouldn't, but I hope it'd be the last option that FD would resort to. I like the suggestion of turning the game single-player-only though, if it all came crashing down. Or, what someone (other than FD) would do, is crank up a server for people to play on and...charge a monthly fee.

I think the game as it stands will be fine, with initial game purchases, expansions, and a cash-extras store.

What can kill elite is negligence. If FD doesn't quickly patch up whatever flaws surfaced over the holiday period AND start loudly announcing what's up next every so often - whatever good press they got on release will quickly evaporate.

Quoted For Truth.
 
Guild wars 1 had a model based on selling the main game plus expansions and it worked very well. You can also have a cash shop (cosmetic items, character slots etc. only please!), which would become even more viable if avatars get added and you can see your ships more often, from the outside. This is also the best option for players, I reckon, noone who doesn't play constantly wants to pay monthly and free to play usually ends up as pay to win and constant in game ads that spoil the gameplay.

Also Elite Dangerous is not on places like Steam. That means they don't have to follow the Steam model, where games start out highly priced and then are given away for next to nothing in the next sale. So hopefully ED can maintain it's value over a long period and not have to sell maasive volume only in the first few weeks/months. And that model also gives Frontier a very big financial incentive to improve the game on a constant basis, because that is what will generate new full price sales and also it encourages them to release expansions that get good reviews, because that will generate further sales of the main game, plus expansions.

This model is really how I'd like to see any server based game I play run, because it is the one that maximally encourages the developers to improve the game. And games I really like are about as rare as hen's teeth, so lets hope Frontier make it work. I think the launch has been successful, but it isn't easy without seeing the volume of sales, to estimate just how succesful - maybe DB will enlighten us, at least to some extent, in a future newsletter.
 
Why though?

5£ for 100 hours of content = 5p an hour. That completely out competes most other forms of entertainment and the cost of most new games.

You say you disagree with reasons given, but supply no rationale of your own.

Think of it this way:

$60 for infinite play time. Cheaper than .05/hour. There are quite successful games out there that are doing a great job with microtransactions and paid dlc as their payment model. This also places the power of choice in the players hands. The game is going in a direction you do not like, you do not buy the content. There's no ever increasing cost to the player that compels them to play to 'get their money's worth!'
 
It won't take that many updates to allow the players to effectively create content themselves. It won't take that much in the way of allowing players to ally / swap resources etc to create a lot more complex universe. That's the way I hope it goes.
 
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