I can see that players can already preorder or join the beta, but I cannot see how to claim this 10 pounds loyality bonus.

If they sent one in their newsletter, then im screwed :O

Seriously though, pushing paid updated into this game kind of misses the point.... but well, the idea is epic.

For now.

We will see how this ends up (Ill end up buying it and leaving it alone again)

I've had my mixed feelings about E:D (mainly the damned awkward flight model), but I'm plenty excited about this.  Despite there being too little to do at the moment, and some baffling design choices by Frontier, it's a great game.  Moreover, there is really nothing else out there like it at the moment, nor is there likely to be very soon  (I'm assuming that the space-flight in No Man's Sky will be as it so far looks: terrible).  I have absolutely no problem with them making this a paid expansion (assuming it will ultimately include all planetary landings).  It's a huge, technically challenging feature set, not to mention the fact that Frontier has already given us some pretty substantial free updates in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4.

Most of all, I'm thrilled that they are doing planetary landings BEFORE walking in ships and stations.  It's what I was expecting, but I was a little nervous.

(assuming it will ultimately include all planetary landings).

I get the impression that it will not include all planetary landings! They're talking 'seasons' of updates - more cash to grab!

I get the impression that it will not include all planetary landings!

I'm getting the opposite impression.  Reading their website it sounds like all the planetary landing stuff (with the exception of walking) will be done in the next "season" which as I understand it is the $40 or whatever they're charging.  Of course, I could be wrong.

I'm getting the opposite impression.  Reading their website it sounds like all the planetary landing stuff (with the exception of walking) will be done in the next "season" which as I understand it is the $40 or whatever they're charging.  Of course, I could be wrong.

I think Cody was pointing out they will be doing only airless rocky planets first. I assume that other landing feature such as atmospheric entry are added on later.

This post is not entirely clear, but lack of clarity is not at all unusual with FD - sales weasels will be sales weasels!

This post is not entirely clear

Actually, it seems you are correct and that not all planet surfaces will be accessible anytime soon (i.e. not in this expansion).  Certainly disappointing, but for the most part I've been pretty impressed with the rate at which they've added contact, if not with what they've added.  I certainly don't see in what way they've had bad sales practices: there's been no sort of pay to win and the microtransactions so far have been reasonable, modest and completely unobtrusive.

This post is not entirely clear, but lack of clarity is not at all unusual with FD

Very true another vague announcement from them, there's a bit more on the blog https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/247

Get the feeling that this announcement has more to do with No Mans Sky than anything else and what happened to that Thargoids expansion was it not meant to be the next big add on.

I think the next two expansions (after Horizons) will probably be more planetary stuff - first airless moons, then gas giants, then planets with atmospheres and/or life. Going walkabout could be in there too, I suppose - but I see problems with that. As for Thargoids - they may not be an expansion. Something about players who don't buy expansions not seeing any, while all expansioned players do. Already, there'll be some players who cannot do the planetary stuff playing alongside those that can. Certainly makes for more cash grabs, splitting planetary landings into two or three 'seasons', eh?

It's all about the money and the example they are following is WOW.

Anyone who has not bought into this may want to wait and see where they go with future expansion as it looks like it's going to get pretty costly.

It's all about the money and the example they are following is WOW.
 
Anyone who has not bought into this may want to wait and see where they go with future expansion as it looks like it's going to get pretty costly.

 
Yes, it has some similarities, with a significant twist: you can still play without the expansions - naturally not benefiting from all the content.
 
But I kinda disagree on the pretty costly: even if you don't go for the lifetime expansion, 50USD per year is far from a very costly affair, as long as you play it with some regularity.
 
If one looks at BF, FIFA or COD series - or Football Manager  you basically have a yearly content update in the form of a new game, at the cost of 50USD.
 
So at the end, playing ED is not more expensive than those games, and surely quite less expensive than WoW (which is not expensive for regular gamers - gaming is a rather inexpensive habit compared to other entertainment activities).

Not so long ago that games would be complete when released although they might have a few bug in them, but this lifetime or season pass is just another excuse by the games industry too screw the games buyers.

As I said before anyone thinking about buying this may want to wait until they finish the game otherwise you will end up paying £150/£200 for a game you will be able to buy for £40 in a couple of years.

Price model aside, here is nice sum up of what is known about Horizons, I hope this all gets in (probably not, but I can still hope):

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=172362

Nice list of features that will be added to Horizons. I know personally I haven't bought this game yet because I was going to wait until some patches and content came out for the game before I got it. I think in the 'future seasonal expansions' section of that post that once I see:

 

• Landing/ driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
• Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
• Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports
• Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
• Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players

I think I will be sold, but we'll see. It's nice getting insight from everyone who is playing it now to gauge when to finally get the game.

I don't mind paying for expansions.... IF they are of quality and really 'expand' the game. If the expansion gives me 5-10hrs of additional content I usually don't buy it unless it comes bundled with the game itself. I know in some MMO games you can earn special in game currency that you could use towards the purchase of expansions. Does Elite: Dangerous provide this?

 

 

I know in some MMO games you can earn special in game currency that you could use towards the purchase of expansions. Does Elite: Dangerous provide this?

No. You have to buy them!!!

Not so long ago that games would be complete when released although they might have a few bug in them, but this lifetime or season pass is just another excuse by the games industry too screw the games buyers.

 

As I said before anyone thinking about buying this may want to wait until they finish the game otherwise you will end up paying £150/£200 for a game you will be able to buy for £40 in a couple of years.

Well, we now live in a world of permanent beta. Tbqh, almost any £40 game that is currently released in the "traditional way" (meaning no DLC, permanent online multiplayer support) can also be picked up for £10 or less in a couple of years also (I'm looking at you Steam - and my 493 game library  😯 ).

While you spare some money by waiting, you also do not enjoy the game. Imho for most people gaming is more expensive in terms of time than money (meaning we are more limited by time than mactually money when it comes to gaming). For someone who enjoys ED it is quite worthwhile to spend the money and not worry about it.

Nice list of features that will be added to Horizons. I know personally I haven't bought this game yet because I was going to wait until some patches and content came out for the game before I got it. I think in the 'future seasonal expansions' section of that post that once I see:

 

I think I will be sold, but we'll see. It's nice getting insight from everyone who is playing it now to gauge when to finally get the game.

 

I don't mind paying for expansions.... IF they are of quality and really 'expand' the game. If the expansion gives me 5-10hrs of additional content I usually don't buy it unless it comes bundled with the game itself. I know in some MMO games you can earn special in game currency that you could use towards the purchase of expansions. Does Elite: Dangerous provide this?

No, I don't think there is any way to purchase the expansions using ingame currency. You also cannot buy ingame currency through IRL money, at least for now.

In ED model and game concept it makes sense to be so. Their financing depends on sales, not on regular sub - but unlike most (all?) freemium games (which ED is not, as it is a pay to play) - they don't sell anything that gives a player ingame advantage on their store. So being able to earn the expansion ingame wouldn't make much sense (at least to me).

With such Horizon's features I think ED has really added meat to the plate and is equalizing with the FFE and FE features, but much better I imagine and with today's grafics. If now they add a good Single Player mode I for sure add it to my buying list.

XenonS

To me what Elite needs the most is emerging mini story arcs that generate content and missions beyond the typical "fetch". For that it needs to have system that creates and uses believable characters and events. Not easy, and while I think FD is working at it, it still is not there.

I've just made a litlle enquiry about any sort of Single Player mode. Actually there is what is called "Solo play" mode which hides all players and puts you against NPCs. The other mode is "Open Play" which you chose for PvP or MMO. For anyone interested, here is a good description of the difference between the 2 by FalconFly:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=28540&page=2

This just adds to my reluctance of playing MMO. A total chaos is what generally results. I really hope FD makes a pure Single Player Offline Mode available, I dont' care if the universe will be somewhat smaller (how smaller is the XBox universe, and is it Single Player and offline?).

XenonS

Three modes: Solo (no players), Group (only players in your group), and Open (anything goes).

I've just made a litlle enquiry about any sort of Single Player mode. Actually there is what is called "Solo play" mode which hides all players and puts you against NPCs. The other mode is "Open Play" which you chose for PvP or MMO. For anyone interested, here is a good description of the difference between the 2 by FalconFly:

 

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=28540&page=2

 

This just adds to my reluctance of playing MMO. A total chaos is what generally results. I really hope FD makes a pure Single Player Offline Mode available, I dont' care if the universe will be somewhat smaller (how smaller is the XBox universe, and is it Single Player and offline?).

 

XenonS

Well, although I'm not sure about the XBox release, I'd be surprised if the universe was any smaller and there was a offline mode.

Except for the case of unstable internet connections, what is the issue with playing a solo online mode? Yes, an offline version could deploy and perfect certain aspects of the game, including eventual modding, but if it was exactly the same game...

 

 

Except for the case of unstable internet connections, what is the issue with playing a solo online mode? Yes, an offline version could deploy and perfect certain aspects of the game, including eventual modding, but if it was exactly the same game...

There are several extremely good reasons why Elite should be offline and why, more generally, a game should follow an MMO model if and only if being an MMO is absolutely crucial to the core mechanics of the game.  You just hit on a very good one right there: modding.  Modding is a pretty big deal (think of games like Skyrim or Sins of a Solar Empire).  Probably the best reason, which may seem trivial but is actually quite a big deal, is the ability to PAUSE THE GAME.  Pausing is important.  If I'm paying money to play a video game, which is a thing made to entertain me, I should be able to pause it.  Sometimes I just want to pause it for no particularly good reason, other times I actually have to use the bathroom.  It is also good to at least have the option to return to a game in exactly the same state I left it in (even if there are restrictions on saving).  Maybe I don't want to see other players' ridiculous names plastered all over all the nearby systems that they were exploring because I didn't feel like doing any exploring quite yet, because I want to do other things in Elite first, am playing other games, or because I have a life outside of video games.  Another huge reason NOT to make a game an MMO, which I think people often miss, is that it necessitates balance on a much grander scale than is necessary or even desirable in single player games.  In Elite this problem manifests itself partly in the need to strictly limit players' ability to individually affect the game world, even in individual systems.  I think this is one of the design principles which most contributes to Elite feeling so grindy.  Then there is the more often discussed problem of connectivity.  Occasionally servers go down or have bandwidth limitations that adversely affect the game.

In my mind almost none of the games ever made have a legitimate justification for always being online.  At the moment, the only example that comes to mind is EVE online.  I personally think that even most traditional MMO's, like WOW or Old Republic, which don't require player interaction at anywhere near the level of something like EVE, would be far better off with some sort of large-scale match-making system than actually being MMO's.  Elite doesn't even come close to having a good enough reason to be always-online, at least in its current state.

Don't get me wrong, I really like Elite Dangerous, I have well over 100 hours in it and I don't intend to stop playing it anytime soon.  (I also believe I have posts in this thread defending it.)  I just think that this is one of the areas in which FD has really screwed up.  I'm not sure why developers have such a hard time understanding why people are so keen on having an offline mode.  David Braben's statements about the gameplay reasons for being always-online are baffling to me, I'm actually more comfortable with the explanation that it would be very technically challenging on their end.

Some very good points there. I have another: making your games online-only limits the lifespan of the game, because there's got to be a server around somewhere to let you play it. Suppose you want to fire up your old copy of Elite: Dangerous 20 years from now, by running a PC emulator on your brain-implant Holo chip (or whatever 🙂 ) - well, you'll have to hope that Frontier are still in business and their server is running, or that someone has managed to make a homebrew replica. Lots of the old abandonware games from the '80s and '90s that people still enjoy would not be viable if they'd all required an active server connection.

auryx

ExpandingMan, you raise good points, and being a offline game would allow ED to be quite different in many small but very significant aspects (different balancing, maybe the return of time compression / better transition between "speeds"), that all combined would also produce a quite distinct game from the online ED version. Personally I'd love to have it but that entails that FD is willing and there is market to a quite different but similar game.