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Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Wookiee, if I bought the expansion pass before launch, did that include this new expansion or just the wings/powerplay/ships patches?

You get Horizons and every other expansion :D! This year's updates have been free for everyone

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You get Horizons and every other expansion :D! This year's updates have been free for everyone

 

Thanks, I was pretty sure but just confirming.

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Executive producer Michael Brookes said at the time of the Kickstarter that he thought the price for lifetime expansion pass was far too low; now i's nearly 4 times higher :P! I can see why you might have had a niggle, but really you got it cheap :P

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Hmm, I guess I got the original game for a steal at 20 pounds, so it's probably worth it to throw in another 40. The real question is, am I going to be still playing this in 4 years to make the lifetime expansion pass worth it.

Edit: Oh, wait, that's before the 10 pound loyalty discount. OK, 30 pounds is definitely worth it.

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Dev Update (20/08/2015)
 

Hi everyone,

For this week's dev update I'm going to talk about story in the game, and some of the changes coming in the CQC update relating to story. But before that I'd like to congratulate all the players who succeeded in stopping the Cerberus outbreak - it was looking quite serious there for a while and could potentially have been quite devastating, so good job!

I mention the Cerberus plague as it's an example of some of the story elements we weave into the game. Generally speaking we have three types of story: The first are the big story arcs like the Imperial Succession thread. This is currently bubbling away quite nicely and there's some big events based around that. There's a similar one for the Federation which will resume during the CQC update and will continue well into next year.

 

There are other big story arcs, some of which have been foreshadowed in GalNet and others that haven't. I won't spoil the surprises!

 

With the major story arcs we put community goals into the plot and that allows players the opportunity to determine where the story goes next. Community Goals are a useful component and they are good for massed action, but some of the storylines need something a bit more subtle. One of the changes in the CQC update allows us to place items for collection as part of scenarios in specific locations. As well as supporting new story options it allows us to create treasure hunts and similar activities. These won't necessarily be telegraphed and I'm quite looking forward to seeing how these evolve.

 

As well as the big story arcs we're supporting stories created by player groups and where appropriate supporting them with gameplay elements like community goals. A word of caution on this though: we won't allow community goals that provide an unfair advantage over other groups. This is also the case with player submitted stories. When these are used in GalNet they will have the commander's name at the bottom of the story.

 

The third type of story is a bit more adhoc. These tend to be more local in focus and are used to fill in the gaps in the main story beats.

 

The changes coming for supporting the stories also have benefits elsewhere. One example of this is that there are new things for explorers to find while they are out in deep space. They won't pop up on the navigation system unless you're close enough.

 

And of course, I can't talk about story without also mentioning the Unknown Artefacts - the mystery for these is about to get deeper. :)

 

The CQC update progresses the tools we have to express story in the game, but it won't end there. We have some exciting plans for how we can expand the story further as we enter Season Two.

 

Progress on the beta release for the CQC update is continuing. It is due to have the internal candidate QA pass next week, this should be about a week in duration so all being well, the beta will be available for those with access on the week of August 31st.

 

Thanks

Michael

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It seems like it's going to cost lots of money.

An annual expansion pass sounds absolutely fair for a game that provides nearly limitless content in a hyper-connected online universe. There are literally billions of things to see (sure, it's not entirely bespoke content, but the point still stands), and adding something substantive like planetary landings and new vehicles is something I am okay with paying for. It's probably the best way to ask players for more money after the initial buy-in cost in this day and age.

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I disagree with there being billions of things to see. While technically accurate they draw from a relatively shallow seed pool so after playing the game for a little while you'll see pretty much every type of planetary body and after that point you'll just see them in different configurations which doesn't make a big amount of different in this game given the nature of the environments. Of course you weren't talking just about the environments so sure there's various ship interactions which also count although the variation here also seems somewhat limited. They built a massive universe and created numerous systems but seem to have been very restrained in allowing emergent events to occur, which is consistent with the game in general in my opinion, the market for example which seems to have so little variation in pricing that there's little reason to search out great prices because they basically don't exist which reduces standard trading to somewhat tedious repetition for marginal gains.

 

I don't want to be too down on the game because there's also a lot I like about it, I must have played it for 100 hours so clearly there's things that click with me. Also not everything I've mentioned is necessarily a negative and I'm sure there's good reasons behind the decisions. I think they created a great foundation and I stopped playing before powerplay (because of reasons documented in this thread) so I guess I haven't seen some of the building upon that foundation. I'm glad there's more significant stuff coming but I'll probably wait a year or two before coming back.

 

 

 

Hmm, I guess I got the original game for a steal at 20 pounds, so it's probably worth it to throw in another 40. The real question is, am I going to be still playing this in 4 years to make the lifetime expansion pass worth it.

Edit: Oh, wait, that's before the 10 pound loyalty discount. OK, 30 pounds is definitely worth it.

 

 

One final moan, I paid £40 for the game and would have to pay £40 for the expansion but for backing you pay a total of £50. Really? I understand the reasoning behind giving backers a better initial deal and bonus' etc but this is such a big difference and lifelong thing at that, it feels like a bit of 'fuck you for not backing'.

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I disagree with there being billions of things to see. While technically accurate they draw from a relatively shallow seed pool so after playing the game for a little while you'll see pretty much every type of planetary body and after that point you'll just see them in different configurations which doesn't make a big amount of different in this game given the nature of the environments. 

 

 

One final moan, I paid £40 for the game and would have to pay £40 for the expansion but for backing you pay a total of £50. Really? I understand the reasoning behind giving backers a better initial deal and bonus' etc but this is such a big difference and lifelong thing at that, it feels like a bit of 'fuck you for not backing'.

I'm not  saying that you're wrong completely, but I recently went on a trip to the centre of  the galaxy, in order to see how the skybox changed as much as anything else, and saw exactly two Herbig stars (ultra rare, rapidly rotating stars) that I had never seen before :eek:! Having said that, there is only more stuff going in, so it should be great when you decide to return.

 

As for the other complaint, the cheapest you could get everything for was 85 pounds, even as an early backer (though that includes all expansions). It's not so much a "fuck you for not backing" as "thanks for taking a chance on a game that hasn't been released and you haven't seen anything of apart from very early concepts" :).

 

In other news, here are some lovely concepts from Horizons, taken from the last two newsletters. One of them has a Panther Clipper in (YAAAAY!)

da4421f4bb6faec7319babb829b82027.jpg

 

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In other other news, I just made it to Pioneer (1 rank below Elite in exploration)! I had been hanging near 90%  for at least a month. Now I've ticked over, I'll probably wait til Horizons before I try to get Elite... I need to make twice as much as I have to date!

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There are exceptions I admit but the majority of the galaxy is the same few stars and planets over and over with different names. Since the game is broadly realistic this does make sense but it also makes exploration rather uneventful. 

 

I considered changing the wording there, "fuck you for not backing" is a bit much, I guess 'leaves a bitter taste' might be more suitable. So £85 for the game and two expansions? 

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There are exceptions I admit but the majority of the galaxy is the same few stars and planets over and over with different names. Since the game is broadly realistic this does make sense but it also makes exploration rather uneventful. 

 

I considered changing the wording there, "fuck you for not backing" is a bit much, I guess 'leaves a bitter taste' might be more suitable. So £85 for the game and two expansions? 

I suspect that exploration will get a much needed kick up the arse in Horizons! On a related note, one of the differences between ED and Star Citizen is that Frontier have gone for astronomical realism, whereas Star Citizen are shaping their 'Verse in the name of interesting gameplay; distances and moon sizes are dramatically cut to what the designers find exciting. Both approaches have merit, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can find out there too (eventually :P!)

As for the pricing thing, the executive producer Michael abrookes said at the time of kickstarter that he thought the life time pass was way too cheap. If their 10 year plan comes to pass, that 85 quid buys the game and 9 years' worth of updates at least!

One of the good things about ED being on Steam is that everyone will get the chance to play at the price they want eventually, even it is a year after everyone else. Another benefit to getting it later is that you can see all the content included and decide to buy it based on that; all we know about Horizons is that it will include landing on airless planets, and a crafting system.

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The only space flight game I ever really got into before ED was Freelancer so perhaps I just lean more to the universe designed for play rather than based on realism.

I (like a lot of people) am unsure about Star Citizen, I didn't back it because I generally don't back things that reach their goal quickly. No Man's Sky is my current hope.

 

So it's £85 for everything for ever, wow. I can see why they'd do that at the time, you want to entice people with maximum reward at minimum price to get to the goal but yeah that does seem cheap.

I'm not sure I follow you regarding the year after, do expansions get rolled into the main game after a year? or just that it's on steam so the price will come down and be in sales, etc?

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The only space flight game I ever really got into before ED was Freelancer so perhaps I just lean more to the universe designed for play rather than based on realism.

I (like a lot of people) am unsure about Star Citizen, I didn't back it because I generally don't back things that reach their goal quickly. No Man's Sky is my current hope.

 

So it's £85 for everything for ever, wow. I can see why they'd do that at the time, you want to entice people with maximum reward at minimum price to get to the goal but yeah that does seem cheap.

I'm not sure I follow you regarding the year after, do expansions get rolled into the main game after a year? or just that it's on steam so the price will come down and be in sales, etc?

I'm also really looking forward to No Man's Sky, but I'm not sure that it will be any more varied than ED other than visually. It certainly has looked fantastic in everything I've seen. In some ways I'm worried that it will be too simplistic; someone said gameplay was a bit like space minecraft, but that could very very cool.

I don't know what Frontier have planned, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did a similar thing next year where new players get everything for a bit more than existing players. Also, I expect steam sales. So both :). If it makes you feel better, the amount that I pledged would keep me going for full price expansions until the mid to late 2040s :D

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To clarify, it was 85 pounds for the game and all future expansions forever. If you've bought the game for 40 pounds, you can now (at least for a little while) buy the lifetime expansion pass for 130 pounds, making the total price for game and pass 170 pounds for post-Kickstarter users. So it's 85 vs 170

I bought just the next expansion for 30 pounds, on top of the 20 pounds for the early bird price on the Kickstarter. The price to get that now is 40 pounds for the game, and 40 pounds for the expansion, so that's 50 vs 80.

All I can say is that there was considerable risk putting the money in on the Kickstarter, as they were advertising a lot of crazy difficult things. When I initially pledged, I gave it a less than 50% chance of finishing and being at least decent, so I took the risk because I could get it so cheap. If it had been 40 pounds, I most likely wouldn't have bothered.

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Hey guys, the beta for update 1.4 should be released next week, after the bank holiday (so probably Tuesday). Here is the corresponding Dev Update (28th August):

Hi everyone,

Following on from last week's dev update our big focus at the moment is preparing for the CQC update beta and alongside it the Xbox One release. The CQC update is currently going through our internal QA pass and assuming this continues going well we’ll release the beta next week after the Bank Holiday.

 

CQC Championship is the main feature of the update and that has changed quite a bit since GPP2 on Xbox One. We've been working on matchmaking to improve its speed and reliability. The Xbox One version uses Xbox Live’s functionality, but for PC we have created our own, which is one of the features needing hammering in the beta test.

 

We've also added two new maps for the update: Ice Field and Asteria Point. Ice Field sees you flying through a dense asteroid field where skilled piloting of your ship is required and Asteria Point where the tunnels system in the main structure can be used to shake a tail. Customising ship loadouts is another great addition to CQC. As players rank up they'll unlock new weapons, abilities and internal modules that they can apply to their ships. Each item offers the player a different way to set up their ship so they can have it set up to match their playing style.

 

When players reach CQC Rank 50 they'll be given the option to 'Prestige'. Prestiging allows the player to set their rank back to 1 where they will lose all of their unlocks, but in return they will be able to earn more credits for use in the main game, a permit to the Attilius Orbital starport in CD-4311917 and a new icon next to their name to show others that this pilot is not to be trifled with. A player can progress up to Prestige Level 9 where they max out the amount of credits they can earn and are seen as one of the best fighter pilots around. 

 

Players can earn credits for use in the main game when they play CQC. The amount of credits a player earns depends on their performance in the match as well as their ranking. The higher their ranking the more credits you can be awarded. When a player Prestiges they open up the possibility of earning even more credits as their rank, and reputation, increases.

As always with a major update there’s also a host of tweaks and fixes and we’ll post the change log when we release the beta. Thanks!

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I got a chance to swing by the PAX booth and got a Vulture skin. I don't think I'll ever drive a Vulture so I'm willing to toss it to someone on here who will use it.

 

Edit: Taken

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The Elite Dangerous 1.4 Beta arrived today, with 3 new ships and CQC. I had a quick blast of CQC over 3 maps, came back later, and had matchmaking issues. What I did play was about a million times better than the other ARENA where your COMMANDER hopes to prove their worth :P:D! You start off getting a few hundred credits per match, and gain ranks by earning experience. This was the first time I attacked another player since early alpha, and it was fun; and there's no insurance to worry about. You have another rank for CQC; I am Helpless.

 

The imperial eagle looks and  sounds great.. it has a medium hardpoint + 2 small hard points and reaches up to about 420 m/s with boost. This looks like it will be about 100 k, but is free to any kickstarter backer that could take the imperial bounty hunter start option.

 

There are now legitimate salvage missions (taking the form of e.g. finding a black box or personal possessions.

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I was about to buy a Vulture so I'll take a wacky PAX skin.

 

Sorry, I meant to edit my post and forgot. Already taken :(

 

I'll keep my eye out and see if I have any friends who  got one.

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Sorry, I meant to edit my post and forgot. Already taken :(

 

I'll keep my eye out and see if I have any friends who  got one.

 

No worries.

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Some random new stuff :

A picture of the surface defence skimmers that will appear  in the first Horizons expansion

 

acb83ffb969e1833dfa5a5e615538ed6.jpg

 

Also, we heard from lead designer Sandro Sammarco that the loot and crafting system will be added for everyone, but certain elements will be restricted to people with the expansion.

 

I've been trying out trucking in a Type 9... I've been pretty lucky so far, but did take a 4 million credit hit after being jumped by an anaconda very close to a planet, and forgot I could just dump cargo :P. It's pretty fun flying in a completely different way

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Still lazily exploring my way back to known space using economical jumps. 2k LY to go. Then it's time to start trading.

 

Wookiee, what are you trading in the type 9? Any trading (web)tools you recommend?

 

So far I've found the following tools (comments on them appreciated):

 

Elite Dangerous Database

http://eddb.io/#

 

Elite Trade Net

http://etn.io/

 

Thrudd's Trade Calculator

http://elitetradingtool.co.uk/

 

Ship Build Planner (Coriolis)

http://coriolis.io/

 

There's about 5-10 other tools. Found a project for tracking tools: http://edcodex.info/

 

Exploration: Great for listening to podcasts. Still getting a thrill finding terraformable planets, and planets with Ammonia-based life.

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From massivelyop.com :

 

The good news for Elite: Dangerous fans is that the latest financial report for Frontier Developments is available, and the game appears to have done fairly well for itself. Cash balances are up, profits are up, and revenue is up. The report also states unequivocally that 825,000 copies of the game have been sold, accounting for 84% of the company’s earnings between those sales and associated merchandise.

The bad news is… well, there isn’t any.

 

Good news for internet spaceships!

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HEh, I've just been bimbling around, not using trade tools: having something tell me what  to do makes it feel like work! Even so, it's easy to make a tidy profit so long as you don't blow up too often :P... I've made about 18 million in it, and lost about 4 due to very bad luck (oh yeah, mentioned above). 

 

In a particularly glamorous trip I took about 450 tons of poo from Abraham Lincoln station to a nearby agriculture world, since I got plenty of missions to take stuff there, and lots of demand for food to be gotten from there (Abraham Lincoln is orbiting Earth, is a service economy and only stocks hydrogen fuel and biowaste). The funny thing was that I still got a pirate after my juicy cargo :D

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Thanks for the info, sounds pretty ripe.

 

Is there any strategy for what missions to currently accept/stack? And are they done mainly just to get rep? It doesn't seem worthwhile to spend all that travel time for missions when you could trade. The missions themselves aren't currently narratively deep enough for me to get invested.

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Supposedly, there's going to be longer range missions soon, but currently all missions are confined to ~15 ly from the mission giver. This isn't much further than my jump range. The cargo missions I take all give more money per ton than I would ever get from profits, and black market missions fine you on the true value of the cargo rather than the reward, so getting caught is only a minor pain. Having said that, I don't do weapons or slaves even when legal. Having said that, I'm in no hurry to make more credits, and consider any money left over after repairs/fuel as good progress (sometimes it's 650 k, sometimes it's 40 k).

 

I'm trying to find a group of systems with a good balance of trades,  pirate missions, and rep and once I find it, I'll settle for a while and  rent something small and fighty.

 

By the way, according to the latest dev update, it looks like the CQC beta will open up to everyone next week for stress testing 

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