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.
Will lack of subscription kill Elite?
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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.
Dumbest crap ever is vowing to uninstall something in a vacuum of any idea what the economic proposition is.
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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.
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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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.
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....
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.
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.
Yes, but that other game will probably cost you more than 5£ for 100 hours of play.
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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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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.
Quoted For Truth.
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.
Quoted For Truth.
It's a game forum, just check how long the players have been predicting that warcrack is about to collapse taking Blizzard with it.
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.
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.
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!'
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