Be Excellent To Each Other

Besides which, that £85 gives me every beta release from now on, the full game when that happens and every expansion pack. And it's fucking Elite IV! No amount of naysaying will ever convince me I've done the wrong thing here - I've waited nearly 20 years to play this game.

I get all the expansion packs (my main reason for paying more than a normal game) too, entry into the proper beta release, and my choice of any of the starter planets/ships.

I also get the physical map and a T-shirt!

I paid more than enough for that imo!

I really couldn't justify paying for early beta access (even if I had a PC to play the game on) unless I won the lottery or something.

Malc

Hyperspace, supercruise and docking in the new Alpha 4.0.

Terrible video quality, but this game is beautiful.

I do think it's very clever how they've handled instancing, what with how the frame shift drive works and all that, but from what I've seen, the load times need some work. It's in Alpha though, so there's plenty of time for Frontier to sort all that out though.

So very excited! Roll on the end of the month when I get to join in with this!

Wait! You spent £100 on a game that isn't finished that you can't play until June?

W.T.F.

I assume this is eventually going to be released retail, having been made so that it works, for a lot less than you paid?

yes, Zio has paid for early access esentially. I imagine in any Multiplayer game, having more experience in a game is going to be advantageous. Also some people pay a premium for an earlier experience.

Malc

Why the hell am I being single out? GazChap is on the the bloody Alpha!

Lolz

Is Zio made of monies? Think he needs to sit down with a nice level headed chap to help him get back on the straight and narrow.

Do you not read the car thread? Gazchap making poor purchasing decisions is a given

Not a poor purchasing decision, I'm loving every minute of it.

Video of combat, docking, repairs and outfitting:

Got to say, that "combat" has put me right off this.

It doesn't help that I'm a shitty combat pilot.

I think even the shittiest combat pilot can fly in a straight line and shot straight ahead.

True To be fair to the game, the place I was at is basically just a "farming" area designed for easy kills so you can get money.

Other parts of the game have NPC pilots that have crazy good AI that I've not managed to beat yet.

And of course other players will have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves.

The good thing about waiting until it's actually released is that I won't have thrown a ridiculous amount of money at it before finding out if it's any good.

This.

The beta I'm on doesn't start till the 30th, but the combat demo that I have for the time being is really good, and certainly more involved than GazChap's video there. I've never tried filming a game in progress from my PC before, but maybe I'll give it a go tonight if I get time.

I so would be spending money on this if I though I'd have time to enjoy the beta.

Premium Beta is now available for a 'mere' hundred quid ........

http://elite.frontier.co.uk/

Too much for my wallet I'm afraid, but us poor folks can at least enjoy this new Anaconda vid until the final, much cheaper release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewo-6WVZaIU

Christ - they're going to make more money if they never release it.

Platinum Gamma Edition only £199!

Well they have to release it, considering how many have already paid for the £20/£30/£35 (depending on when you pledged or pre-ordered) final game.

It's really fucking difficult at the moment, BTW. Like, proper hard! I'm starting to realise now that the main tactic to employ when attacked whilst you're still in the starting ship is to run as fast as you can whilst making random movement to try to dodge fire - because you can't beat anything at all with the shitty starting weapons. And docking: it's a cunt. The videos I'd been watching made it look so simple, but simple it is not!

Contractually, the only have to release it once, er, it's shipped. The transaction doesn't count as finalised until then.

This business model is great for the developer but terrible for the consumer.

It's good where it means that games can get funded which otherwise might not.

I also don't see how the consumer suffers?

Those that want to pay a "normal" price for the game, can do that. They wouldn't have had access to alphas and betas of a "normal" game, and they haven't got access to it with this game.

However, anyone who wants to pay more to get a sneak peak, to practice their docking, or whatever, they can do that too.

I really don't see the issue.

Malc

What if the company goes bust and the game doesn't get released?

Then you get nothing. As was clearly explained to you before you put any money down.

A physical map of the whole of space? :o

Quite.

So what?

What if your lottery ticket doesn't win? What if the value of your house goes down after you buy it? What if the company you bought shares in goes bankrupt?

Not every financial transaction has to be defined as money-goes-in, goods-come-out. The world is richer and more complex than that.

Or to put it another way: who are you to tell the users of KickStarter how to spend their money?

I think this is the thing really. It's an accepted risk. Maybe the game will never be released. Certainly, whilst it was all just fancy videos and so on, I stuck to a £20 pledge on the Kickstarter, because whilst I rank the previous 3 Elite games as being among my absolute, all time favourite games ever, and whilst I've been looking forward to the mere prospect of a fourth game in the series since the nineties, I couldn't afford to go throwing money and something that might never happen.

Of course, once people started showing off Twitch streams of them playing the Alpha builds, I felt more confident about jumping in myself.

As it stands, the Premium Beta, which is really just a rebalanced Alpha 4, is pretty damn good. Unstable as all buggery, which makes for a frustrating experience at times, but hey, it's still relatively early days. I'm exceptionally impressed by what I've played so far however.

I'm the guy answering

Plus, you know, precedent. If i'm making a game and I see I can gain more cash but not actually releasing it and just flogging it to people as an unfinished alpha, then not releasing it and just making small changes every so often could be a viable business plan...

That's the plot of The Producers, but with games instead of plays, isn't it?

There is an RPG game maker in the latest Humble Bundle. I was tempted to make a Beex RPG...

Quite possibly, I walked out of the remake after 30 minutes, as it was fucking awful

..........................................

Wtf is up with that website? An uncloseable popup video advert right in the centre of the screen. I'm sure the ad revenue was worth it guys!

It's excellent, and that trailer is no pre-rendered "here's what we're hoping it'll look like" thing - that's how the game actually looks. It's really going to be something else when it's released.

Just bumped into Gazchap in the LP 98-132 system. A slight mis-communication occurred, during which we may have opened fire on each other and I may have destroyed his shields and was making progress on his hull before some other chumps decided to join in and make mincemeat of me.

I was starting to get a little frustrated with this not-really-even-a-beta-yet - but this has renewed my faith somewhat!

My faith has been renewed massively now that I have a headset/microphone and TrackIR running.

So I can now look all around my cockpit just by moving my head, and can use voice commands to control the ship. IT'S THE FUTURE.

And yeah, I flew to LP 98-132 4 to see if there were any canisters of valuable cargo to scoop up, only to see "CMDR ZIO" in my contact list. Given the lack of proper communications in the beta at the moment, I fired at him a couple of times just to get his attention and say "Hello", and then he decided to try and kill me - so I'm glad some others stepped in

(although I was then completely obliterated by the AI in an Anaconda shortly after )

Head-tracking would definitely be pretty nice for this I think. I don't have anything swanky and just play with a wired Xbox 360 pad, but I'm starting to get okay at piloting with that. Having the combination of pitch and roll on the left stick and yaw and vertical thrust on the right stick means you can get fairly decent at manoeuvring in dogfights after some practice. I've setup my landing overrides so that the L and R triggers provide lateral thrust when my landing gear is deployed, which makes docking a breeze.

I've tried it with a 360 pad, but I can't get used to it compared to the HOTAS stick I have. Similar set up to you though, when my landing gear is deployed (USING MY VOICE) the POV hat controls my directional thrusters.

I've bought in to the beta, since it was somehow only 18 euro up from what I had. So that means in 4 days time I will be playing this! Whoopee!

Now I am giving consideration to the lifetime expansion pack - it's kind of annoying that we really have no idea of how good a deal it is or isn't.

As it turns out, I can already play the Combat 1.00 scenarios for now!

I AM PLAYING ELITE!

Ok, £50 for a pre-order and beta access, that's getting closer to a reasonable price. It's certainly within the I'm bored impulse threshold for me, so I expect I'll be giving it a go at some point soon.

LIFETIME EXPANSION PASS or NOT LIFETIME EXPANSION PASS... agg?!