To complement “why are you here”:
Who are you?
What do you want?
Where are you going?
Do you have anything worth living for?
Whom do you serve, and whom do you trust?
So weird, four questions out of those six come up in the opening credits for season five of Babylon 5, which I happen to be re-watching at the moment.
HRose
4743
My mistake since I thought Powerplay was 1.4.
But the question was clear, he asked the timescale and instead the answer was deliberately vague. That means they have plans to release seasons in shorter phases.
Otherwise he could have simply said they were aiming at yearly expansion. He deliberately excluded 1.5, that still is before Horizon.
Without a subscription model, that’s not bad, at least in my opinion.
Elite is still not a mmorpg. What makes mmorpg pricey is server farms costs and bandwidth, all things that Elite offloads to your PC. So there’s no reason to compare prices when the context is different.
you don’t like their business model so…
Whether I like it or not is beside the point. It’s whether the business model is sustainable the big problem. As I said Elite is an excellent technical foundation on which to develop a space simulator. That means having a sustainable business model is critical for delivering that potential.
KevinC
4744
Clearly, if only Frontier had listened to HRose, they would have been able to create a successful space sim. Alas, it shall never be realized now. Really, I’m shocked that every developer and executive doesn’t run designs and business plans past HRose first, as he clearly knows more than people who have been part of the industry for decades.
All they have to do is release a complete stand alone expansion that is Horizons for say £25 (or there abouts) and the huge negative comment hit they are currently taking (and may carry on taking) will go away.
As for subscriptions i hate them (in anything really, which is why i have as few as possible - good thing i hate mobile phones!) MUCH preferring to pay for something outright. It’s just a weird kink in my personality maybe, one of the reasons i never play MMO’s (the other bigger reason is the douchebag cheaters that spoil MMO’s). ED was meant to be different (when it was going to have a SP mode (maybe)) and the whole pricing model of paid for expansions was not a problem as that is just how i prefer to buy and play games (TES/Civ/GalCiv etc etc).
Guildwars was the closest i came to buying into an MMO (i did mess around with WoW for a few weeks on a friends version, prefered TES as deeper game and no human idiots) as that was NOT subscription based. Anyway the advantage of not having a subscription is you are NOT tied into the game the whole time, and having to put up with stuff you would maybe rather not.
In the case of ED if you really don’t like Planet Landings you can simply not HAVE to pay for them, which you would be forced to do in a subscription system. The onus then falls on the Dev to deliver a truly awesome expansion that everyone wants (and that is another kettle of fish for the ED team i would say!).
ED is not a typical MMO, in that the MP aspect is very much reduced, so really having a player base not have some components of the game will have less effect than a typical MMO gamer will think.
But back to my first point Frontier simply need to offer a cheap(ish) standalone expansion route for Horizons and that will kill off pretty much all the bad will.
KevinC
4746
I’m just going to take a wild guess here, but I think they might have run the numbers before settling on the current discount rate. Wild and reckless speculation on my part, but I think there’s at least a sliver of a chance that a company thinks about these things before setting a price (besides, isn’t your “£25 or there abouts” figure already pretty close to being the case?).
“Just make it cheap”, indeed. I’ll pitch the same to my CEO when he gets into the office today.
I don’t know why I’m engaging, but here goes. Why. WHY does a vague answer automatically mean shorter seasons?
1.5 is going to be a ships update that gives us a massive amount of ships and will be apparently the last big content push before Horizons, but stuff likely needs to be finalized before he can say more, or do you just like making shit up?
Er, no, a lot of the heavy lifting for Elite is done on the server-side, that’s why it’s an online only game. Where do you think the money is going to come from to support their network infrastructure? Wishes and unicorns?
It is EXACTLY the point. You’re so negative toward this game that all you can see is doom and gloom, most of which you seem to have made up to support your negative opinion of the game. You’re like your own hugbox.
Okay, I’ll bite, why do you think this ISN’T sustainable? I mean I think regular paid expansions like this will HELP it be sustainable, especially if the expansions are meaty like this one is. I wish they’d not use the word “season” but whatever, it’s out there so we have to deal with it. But tell me, Mr. Economics Professor, why isn’t this sustainable?
KevinC
4748
Oh, Brian. This is like watching you finally get caught and bitten by a zombie. You’re doomed now. Doomed.
I’m sure they did run some numbers, like i’m sure they did the same when designing Power Play and how that would work (i.e. everyone makes mistakes even the pro’s). And £25 was just a pure punt, less than what it is currently, but not so cheap (say £15) to be unworkable. The main principle is they probably need to spin out a proper separate from the main game version of Horizons, so people can not get their knickers in a twist about having to buy the game twice (and pay that premium) especially if they have already put in some big bucks for the main game and now the new punks get it all cheaper than what they have already paid.
This is where, for all their obvious smarts, Frontier seem to drop the ball so often, so frequently and so perfectly it could almost be a set up! Almost as if someone is working on the inside to sabotage the potential of ED!!! They really are kings of doing things to piss off their fan base, which sort of is the opposite of what you want to be doing in a crowd-funding model (i think, SC certainly makes mountains more cash and they do not even have a game!).
Does it take a non-rocket scientist to sit down with the ‘smart’ people and say, ‘well ok, this idea to make the Horizon expansion in effect much cheaper for new comers to ED might not be the best move? How about we make it a cheaper stand alone version for those that have already supported us, not by a wide mile, but enough so that it makes some logical sense to most people?’
BANG! BANG! (checks…) i think Zombie Brian is at peace now :)
I know, right? It’s almost as if it was intentional! ;)
(indeed, those are the six questions embedded in the Babylon 5 and Crusade series, so good catch!)
That I agree with Zak, in a sense. While I have little problem with the pricing, the language SURROUNDING the pricing is just asking for anger. Ugh.
Have they announced how many expansions/seasons there will be? $195 seems like a lot of money, unless this is going to be a ten year project or something.
Maybe $195 is not a lot of money to hardcore fans who threw hundreds of dollars at Star Citizen.
schurem
4754
I really dont see why people need to make such a fuss about this shit. Vote with your wallet and stfu.
I found a really good trade run yesterday but was in a shitty cobra. Need to fly all the freaking way to shinrarta to get my Python. I’m but as well keep going and flu all the way up to alliance space to do some trading. Power play was meh for me, especially when I found my rank back to zero after some inactivity. Fuck that jazz. Gonna make a couple million doing the space trucking thing. Any tips for an aspiring space trucker?
KevinC
4755
As far as I know, they haven’t. I think the reality of the situation is there will be expansions as long as there is demand. They have more planet types to open up, atmosphere, living organisms, and FPS to work on just off the top of my head, so I think it’s safe to say they at least plan on working on the game for a few years.
They have said the overall plan is a 10 year dev cycle, somewhere on a few occasions. If i can make it through the forums i will post some links…
Edit: Well this is not official comment on the 10 year dev cycle, but more an interesting post why Expansions vs Subscription is far the better deal (for us) in ED:
Total Subscription costs approx = £1,180
Total Expansion ‘Seasons’ approx = £490
Well, I had a lot of luck on Venus, and I always had a ball on Mars.
So if I sprang for the lifetime pass now, that would include the Horizons content, correct?
Thanks. That makes it a little less like “buying a pig in a poke” as the saying goes, since I’m only risking 135 bucks (195-15 discount = 180, of which I’d have to spend 45 anyway to buy Horizons).
I’ll have to see if it also includes the betas.
