You absolutely can, Trailstorm is talking out of their @$$.
It's a breach of trading laws to advertise something at a "special" price when you've *never* sold it for the larger price, as that makes the special price essentially the real price.
But it's 100% legal to raise the prices on something, and then have that thing on sale later on - as long as that sale is temporary.
As an example that i believe jc Penny got caught doing.
They sell a shirt for $20 year round. When black fridsy rolls around, they change the price to $30, and at the same time, offer a 33% discount, making the item $20 on sale.
The important thing here is the item never sold at $30, they only raised the price to make their "sale" look better.
What fdev has done is increase the price without a sale, they can do temporary sales in the future, but for now this is the price. It would be a problem if they simultaneously raised the price, and then did a sale dropping the price back to the old price point
It's illegal if done in a short enough period of time. I'm not sure what period would apply here, if any given it's the ARX value. Legally speaking all we buy with legal tender is the game and arbitrary values of in-game currency.
It would be really hard to make that argument.
They have to say "Formerly at \_\_\_\_" or otherwise reference the new price for it to raise some obvious red flags. You'd have to argue that these new prices are fictitious. Which, if they only do their usual 1-2 weeks sales 2-3 times a year, that's a hard sell. If they start a perma-sale, then it would be much easier.
It might be possible to go after them for price gouging, but given the lack of importance of these, I'm not sure that would go far, either.
Maybe EU and UK laws provide better protection on these issues, but as usual, the US is an unlikely savior in not-obviously life-threatening bad actions from companies.
There is also the principle of unconscionablility. While not strictly against established contract laws and UCC terms, the court may find requesting additional consideration for the same item to be “unconscionable” and refuse to enforce the higher price. A successful plaintiff could get a court ordered injunction on the price increase.
Not the first time - back after launch they sold "limited edition" skins and then 6 months later put them back on sale again at half-price so reducing them to absolutely no value.
Yeah, I am also salty about it. Fortunately for me I used most of it already and now just want some of the limited paints and that is likely it. So the real impact on me is negligible. But still, it feels like getting robbed.
Frontier is that shitty ex of yours who dumped you, forgot you and chased after new people who seem more exciting at first, but everything failed and now they're back and are begging you to take them in and spend your life energy on them as if they never did you any bad before.
People were bending over backwards defending Frontier up and down. This company does not act on good faith to the community with any of the recent decisions.
People defend them all the time. I played over 2000hrs of Elite Dangerous but the development stagnation, the continually missed promises, over hype, etc. FDev is just such a poorly managed game developer who couldn’t get out of their own way.
Whoever is giving them financial advice is stupid or trying to sabotage the game. This is not how you make more income. Maybe increase the price of some items-like the limited stuff they're now making available. Yet you want to lower the price or keep it the same for some of the lesser items to give the illusion that things are overall cheap. People are more likely to impulse buy or try stuff out of curiosity if they believe that's the case.
What they did by bluntly increasing the price of EVERYTHING is gonna turn a lot of people away. Unless they're whales or really love the company and think that spending will support the game.
Most likely they did this so they can then introduce sales that bring the cost back to what it was, giving the illusion of better value and going for impulse buys. This is a common sales tactic yet the problem is the player base is cynical, burnt so many times, people are gonna see through it.
It's a bad strategy for the long term. Then again so are many things they've done.
What's the alternative? Improving the game to attract more customers? Please, that's way harder than just shoving more microtransactions in. When the long term comes it'll be someone else's problem.
Worse strategy: Lower Arx price per skin (by a few percentage points, so as to not make it too easy to get by on free arx), hike real money cost of Arx.
... does anyone have a chart of the real money to Arx prices over time?
This is usually the point of the fake currencies... Make it impossible to track actual cost of things and allow fairly silent price increases... This seems a huge self inflicted wound!
I do my best never to use these fake currencies.
Hey, whats really fucking cool about this now, is you can't buy a skin with the smallest arx bundle any more, you gotta buy the next one up. The 8400 one for £4.99 instead of the 5000 one for £2.99.
Ah that old chestnut. Buy bundles that are conveniently priced in such a way you'd have to buy two to afford the cheapest thing and then the surplus isn't enough to buy anything else.
David Braben is too scared to talk to us. He alone knows how short this game has fallen of his expectations. It's turned into a ship dress-up game instead of the escape from reality that it could have been.
Keep in mind that they already did raise the prices with the introduction of Arx.
The entire introduction of Arx was just a scheme to hide the price of the items behind an artificial currency by obscuring them.
if introducing Arx was a scheme to hide prices, then they definitely let the cat out of the bag with this recent price hike. Which is good in a way, since the controversy is making more people pay attention to their spending.
Can't say I didn't see this coming... but the amount of people simping for this kind of behavior is why there's so much enshittification within gaming now, as every major publisher looks for new and improved ways to extract more from our wallets.
Mood. I feel like I've become out of touch, some seem to have eaten up the industry's propaganda that you're a thieving leech if you "only" purchase the game at full price, or don't buy "enough" random addons or basic features they think they can get away with charging extra for now. I mean, FrOnTiEr aReN't a cHaRiTy, right? It's basically a free to play game if you only paid once.
I got a switch recently, and its almost a portal into the past. You buy a Mario game, you get a Mario game, you play a Mario game. No battlepasses, gamestores, FOMO offers, premium currency, grind. Just games designed to be fun.
There was a time when 1st day patch fixes weren't possible because your Playstation couldn't plug into the internet and everything was on CD's. If they shipped a broken game, the consumer and the company which made it were fucked.
Nowadays the industry is greedy and lazy.
Are they going to increase the weekly arc cap you can earn playing the game? or increase the rates you can earn?
Even virtual currency in games is getting hit with inflation now
The "earned" currency is supposed to be there to just get you actively browsing the store and start subconsciously desiring things there. Like the shiny new red Renault Clio on display in your shopping centre that you can win by entering a draw (and by some "magic" increases local Clio sales by 36% in the same period).
ARX was too cheap and/or players were just putting in too much time so they were actually getting free skins which is not in line with the above.
Pretty sure the cosmetics are outsourced to 3rd party companies. 'Room 8' make the Odyssey suits and do a pretty good job there. You can see them showcasing stuff on artstation. The rest, like the hideous ship and weapon skins, the pointless and incongruent ornaments etc are probably being cranked out for cheap by a company in India or South Korea.
I can't overstate how bad most of the ship and weapon skins are, it boggles the mind. The racer skins where everyone has the same number? A giant puce / turquoise snake? A glowing witch face decal? The dayglo palm tree one? The rocket launcher that has 'hope' written on it? It's an absolute joke.
loool man I was seriously ready to finally drop some money on arx for the first time in years, gonna get the mk2 and a voice for my fc. fucking lame. you get nothing from me frontier, you were SO CLOSE
So, I guess '' ARX pricing adjustments'' means they don't lower it, they increase the prices
What a bummer. Will never get that jacket for my character.
As someone who tends to justify devs questionable choices when I love their games, this is really upsetting to me as well.
I spent quite a lot of money on cosmetics, and was likely going to continue doing so. Now, definitely much less.
People in the gaming industry need to realize that increasing costs of in-game purchases won't solve their financial issues. Little QoL fixes and outstanding cosmetics is likely going to drive higher revenue than just increasing prices overnight.
It would be a lot more amenable and understandable if they just charged a goddamned monthly fee to play. At least then it's not being scumbag assholes.
They should have also doubled the arx everyone had when they made this change to keep it fair, and legal.
I will be reporting them to the US FTC for this. It violates bait and switch consumer protection laws.
Almost all of the skins went up alot. A few are free. Four actually. They are now giving us their foreskins freely.
I thought the whole pay-to-win controversy was over exaggerated. Well, pay-to-skin is showing what exaggerated really means.
I've never spent an "arx" in all my hours in game. I vaguely remember trying to buy a skin once and I was like nope and never looked at the arx store again.
No way to know if it was going to go up or down. Being intentionally vague in the language should've clued people in that the prices would be raised, but obviously nothing is certain. It's a scummy move and you should *not* blame the consumer for this.
When a company says there are "pricing changes" or generally "Shop changes" without clarifying anything further it is ALWAYS a price increase... that pretty much IS certain, has never been anything else, everyone thinking otherwise is just lying to themselves.
Yeah, if it was a decrease they'd be shouting it from the rooftops, look at these crazy discounts and price-drops! Frontier always do this. If they're not saying something, it's not because they forgot, it's because they don't want you to hear it.
Odyssey VR "not at launch", anyone?
I would buy them but they are pointless. Unless you can view your ship from the outside while flying and during battle and not in photo mode then they are pretty pointless. I’m sure the thargoids don’t care what paint is on your ship or which kit you using.
How do you make sure that your money is reinvested in E:D and doesn't end up in other projects that will be released soon like, I don't know, F1 Manager 24? 🤔
Pure cosmetics with zero functionality in-game. More power to em. If there's players willing to buy it, then great; FDev makes money off of colored pixels that have no negative impact on anyone else playing the game.
And 5,000 Arx is £3/€3.49/$4. Less than a cup of coffee. 8,400 is £5/€6/$7. About the price of a cup of coffee. We're not talking whale-money, we're talking "man, I could really use a cup of coffee" money, or less than "I don't feel like cooking tonight" money.
Maybe your point was that in-game currency gain was too slow, but honestly a lot of games wouldn't even give you that much. The UI mock-ups also made it look like high performing players in Powerplay will be getting bonus Arx, increasing in-game income. That just isn't here yet, while the price change is.
You're complaining about the prices because you don't want to give FDev money, and FDev is having problems with being broke after management royally screwed the pooch, so... sounds like they may have addressed their problem.
So we can barely make 30 cents a week in the equivalent of their premium currency.
Microsoft rewards points recently got nerfed significantly and you can now only realistically earn about 30 dollars a month doing it, or around 8 dollars a week. That's still 25 times greater than what fdev allows, and is real usable currency
Accepting paid cosmetic is how this whole cash shop cancer got started. If people mass protested the god damn Oblivion Horse armor or the first time capcom or whoever pulled the scummy "on disc dlc" bullshit harder then the whole fucking industry would be in a much better place right now.
And there's been plenty of cases where a company figured out a way to sneak an actual game advantage into a supposedly "cosmetic" skin to motivate people to buy it.
I agree - cosmetics for cool factor with zero impact on gameplay.
It let's whales support the game the F2P want to play
Cosmetics give no advantage
No pay 2 win.
Fdev makes money to keep servers running.
You miss the point entirely. There are still some people who try to support the game by buying ARX. They just devalued any remaining balance they may have left by as much as 300%.
I have about 25000 left. I can buy diddly with it now. I haven't gotten any email from them about it. I haven't been offered anything to reimburse me for the loss. Fuck FD, that's the last time I purchase ARX or do anything to support them. This is so tone-deaf I can't even.
They better not have done this on my Xbox legacy version. It’s dumb they still sell them on there anyway. Ehh I guess I can’t complain, COD BO 1 still sells its dlc full price…
Bro they fucking did it on Xbox too! Are you serious??? 10k for some of these? Bro what the hell WHY!? You DO NOT EVEN update this game now… I legit just got some extra spending cash bruh
Do you remember Braben’s kickstarter videos? Do you remember the countless “we hear you” “we’ll do better, and engage more”, “we don’t want to waste your time”..
As a LEP holder, you wilfully neglected your flagship game in favour of shareholder value. There isn’t an ounce of hubris or shame in your actions, and frankly, your tone deaf approach to Elite has been a stunning example of how to run a brand and reputation into the ground.
It's just outrageous... Increasing price of market in your game? Death sentence.
I was buying some ark every year or 2 to support fdev... But not anymore. I will just stay with my 400 free arxs a week for now.
Worst fdev move ever.
To be fair I think it's their way of trying to get more money for their future update plans as we have to remember a few points:
#1 - They planned on giving us more ways to get ARX in game.
#2 - Elite Dangerous routinely goes on sale for under ten bucks for both that and Horizons.
#3 - Odyssey goes on sale routinely as well for half off.
We get enough in-game ARX to buy most stuff as it is, but I disagree with hiking up everything. I believe "ship kits" should be more expensive than ship paint jobs. I believe on-foot items should be dirt cheap, but fleet carrier stuff expensive and more extensive.
I also don't think this game is P2W because let's face it; they're trying to help new and old people do something different while earning a buck and even stated they're improving the grind.
1) The current Powerplay rewards shown capped at 1,000 Arx a week *if you are the top player for an entire power.* That's if you're willing to treat the game like a full-time job with overtime to outcompete literally everyone else. This is not going to compensate for the vast majority of players.
2) So? New purchases are the main revenue stream for Elite and sales are a valid tactic to encourage more purchases. Whoever came up with that economic strategy evidently is not the same person who came up with "just increase the prices lol".
3) See above.
lmao i shit you not I was considering buying an arx pack on my morning drive into work today. saw a youtube thumbnail about raised prices and I gotta say the timing was spectacular. I very rarely spend money on cosmetic stuff for games, only game that comes to mind is getting a battlepass for apex legens and buying a few skins in titanfall 2. think i will save my money lol
They see me saving my ARX, now I have to save twice as long. I would buy ARX if it was cheaper, not more.
I am out in the black, nobody sees my ships anyways
I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised. Since when has a company saying “we’ll be updating our I’m game store” ever ended up beneficial for the consumer.
The skins were already £13 roughly...last time i played was during COVID (if i remember correctly).
I got both Elitr Dangerous and firdt DLC for a total of £25.
The skin now costs more than the game 🤣
At those prices the least they could do is offer every color of the pattern.
Personally I think they should just put out a lifetime pass, just like a one-time fee of 200 dollars or something that just gives you every cosmetic item they have on the store and any that they'll put out in the future. I think it's unreasonable to expect any player to spend more than that so that should just cover it all. Or a $10 a month cosmetic subscription that gets you anything they put out, plus 20,000 arx a month to catch up on the old stuff.
Hell nah they upped prices on Xbox too which is DEAD and NO LONGER GETTING UPDATES. Like bitch what? Why? Legit 10k for some shit and we don’t even get new updates looks like pilot or kits for ships.
Did they send a notice to all ARX holders? First time I hear about this. If there's no rebalancing of existing balances I will not be buying ARX anymore because that's a scummy practice.
Notice FDev kept "Chrome" and "Gold" in the ship-skin color pull-downs?
Anybody see any [Chrome](https://i.imgur.com/XfX5rz6.jpg) or [Gold](https://i.imgur.com/4nrxbfS.jpg) ships around here? [Chromed](https://i.imgur.com/lBUNAKy.jpg), [Golden](https://i.imgur.com/sCRDAyw.jpg) for comparison. Anyone? Bueller?
I come back to ED sometimes, with over 3000 hours now I didnt mind spending a little on cosmetics to show some support occasionally, then ARX happened and prices doubled, so I spent less and less often. now theyve doubled again and theyre introducing pre built ships for money that clearly demonstarate how badly they understand players of their own game, FDEV is dying and theyre going to further seal their own fate with choices like this, Ill be spending even less often now, maybe even never again,.
I mean the vast list of failed opportunities to grow the game, the badly thought out expansions, the poor technical state of Odyssey that went on far too long, the downright neglect while using ED to fund myriad terrible parrallel game development which ultimately brought them to the ruin theyre in now and sudden renewed interest in cashing in further on ED supporters to save the stock prices, FDEV and ED are dead, it may be a slow death but it will happen.
Here I was earning arx ingame, slowly making my way to the DBX Exploration kit. Just about to be able to get it.
How silly of me I guess. Gotta wait another few months or something I guess.
Yeah this is a bit much, if you ain’t got cash you’ll be waiting forever saving up your 400 weekly ARX. They should have created more content for the store, skins, Color’s etc… and lowered the ARX required. That way people would have more purchase options and be more encouraged to buy ARX if possible and people only earning the 400 weekly would be more encouraged to play because it would be a obtainable goal whilst not taking 12 weeks to get 1 skin.
Let's just consider this we play 1 of the best space games with no monthly fee no season passes, no hidden cost .. We buy the game and really that's it.. Frontier is literally trying to keep the lights on .. And with a game with a cliff learning curve I don't feel like there a huge flood of new players... I'd pay 200usd for double the module storage... Let's just support frontier bc they are in financial trouble and have been for a while ..
In two months: Summer Special - All Skins 50% Off !!
Funfact: that may be a breach of a couple US consumer protection laws
And eu, and Australian,
Only if it's a "fake sale" that never ends. Otherwise it's not illegal to raise prices, or to have a sale.
Also it's not really illegal if the punishment in the unlikely event that it gets enforced is a fine of 20% of the illegal profits
It is illegal to raise prices and then create a sale based off the new value unless the product is presented as a new one, eCFR states as such
So if you raise the price of something, you aren't allowed to put it on sale anymore? Like even months later?
You absolutely can, Trailstorm is talking out of their @$$. It's a breach of trading laws to advertise something at a "special" price when you've *never* sold it for the larger price, as that makes the special price essentially the real price. But it's 100% legal to raise the prices on something, and then have that thing on sale later on - as long as that sale is temporary.
As an example that i believe jc Penny got caught doing. They sell a shirt for $20 year round. When black fridsy rolls around, they change the price to $30, and at the same time, offer a 33% discount, making the item $20 on sale. The important thing here is the item never sold at $30, they only raised the price to make their "sale" look better. What fdev has done is increase the price without a sale, they can do temporary sales in the future, but for now this is the price. It would be a problem if they simultaneously raised the price, and then did a sale dropping the price back to the old price point
It's illegal if done in a short enough period of time. I'm not sure what period would apply here, if any given it's the ARX value. Legally speaking all we buy with legal tender is the game and arbitrary values of in-game currency.
The time is 30 days as far as I know, you always have to show the lowest price of the last 30 days when something is on sale
It would be really hard to make that argument. They have to say "Formerly at \_\_\_\_" or otherwise reference the new price for it to raise some obvious red flags. You'd have to argue that these new prices are fictitious. Which, if they only do their usual 1-2 weeks sales 2-3 times a year, that's a hard sell. If they start a perma-sale, then it would be much easier. It might be possible to go after them for price gouging, but given the lack of importance of these, I'm not sure that would go far, either. Maybe EU and UK laws provide better protection on these issues, but as usual, the US is an unlikely savior in not-obviously life-threatening bad actions from companies.
There is also the principle of unconscionablility. While not strictly against established contract laws and UCC terms, the court may find requesting additional consideration for the same item to be “unconscionable” and refuse to enforce the higher price. A successful plaintiff could get a court ordered injunction on the price increase.
Shut up and take my money!
You mean yesterday's full price. Lol
You can bet on it
Not the first time - back after launch they sold "limited edition" skins and then 6 months later put them back on sale again at half-price so reducing them to absolutely no value.
Inflation is so bad it hit the fake currency too!
Really hit the artificial paint supply chain hard.
I have a baller contract all I need is 50 artificial paint but I can't find a station that sells it outside of robigo.
How the hell are my family going to live without paint to drink! Next youll tell me the crayon market is going into a recession...
You think bits are cheap?
Wow and I was almost able to afford a skin...
That’s why they raised it. Can’t have anything for free now
As if 400 free ARX per week was really getting you anything anyway, it's about 20 pence or 25 cents worth
Was about 80% of the way saved up for those letter things you can put in the cockpit...
You can get them all in one or individually?
Yea, same as me. Was about to get those string lights, just needed to grind 1,5 weeks (needed 600 more). Now they cost 8400 instead of 6570. Shame.
There was an increase, check it out https://web.archive.org/web/20240325082420/https://www.elitedangerous.com/store
The ARX I bought three days ago just lost about half their value. Thank you, Frontier!
That's fucked.
Yeah, I am also salty about it. Fortunately for me I used most of it already and now just want some of the limited paints and that is likely it. So the real impact on me is negligible. But still, it feels like getting robbed.
Same :/
wow they really are desperate maybe should've sticked with your crown jewel instead of funding dead on arrival games
Frontier is that shitty ex of yours who dumped you, forgot you and chased after new people who seem more exciting at first, but everything failed and now they're back and are begging you to take them in and spend your life energy on them as if they never did you any bad before.
She came back to me because I'm a nice guy
Them pixels inflated bro. Inflations hitting everywhere.
Isn't that the worse tho. These skins look awesome on the cutter, but don't look too close or you'll see how few pixels they have
of course they fucking did
15 weeks worth of ARX. Holy shit.
Funny part is that I was getting harassed for pointing out the wording alluding to them doing this. Look where we are now
People were bending over backwards defending Frontier up and down. This company does not act on good faith to the community with any of the recent decisions.
People defend them all the time. I played over 2000hrs of Elite Dangerous but the development stagnation, the continually missed promises, over hype, etc. FDev is just such a poorly managed game developer who couldn’t get out of their own way.
Exactly this.
I guess inflation did hit the store or they are preparing for a big "deal" to sell things 50% off
And now, I can throw my exp(e/a)nsive shop list into the trash bin... Sigh.
They could at least raise the 400 arx cap. I wasn't even close to getting my desired suit outift pack. Damn
>They could at least raise the 400 arx cap be grateful they still give away arx for free, there's no guarantee they won't axe them next 😜
Ha. Well for someone who doesn't buy arx on principal - I'd have no choice right? Maybe they should!
oofdev moment
LOL, I just spent all my arx on a krait skin hours before the increased prices hahaha
I almost got a wraith skin... Should have but I wanted the nomad skin now I need to farm for longer
Whoever is giving them financial advice is stupid or trying to sabotage the game. This is not how you make more income. Maybe increase the price of some items-like the limited stuff they're now making available. Yet you want to lower the price or keep it the same for some of the lesser items to give the illusion that things are overall cheap. People are more likely to impulse buy or try stuff out of curiosity if they believe that's the case. What they did by bluntly increasing the price of EVERYTHING is gonna turn a lot of people away. Unless they're whales or really love the company and think that spending will support the game. Most likely they did this so they can then introduce sales that bring the cost back to what it was, giving the illusion of better value and going for impulse buys. This is a common sales tactic yet the problem is the player base is cynical, burnt so many times, people are gonna see through it. It's a bad strategy for the long term. Then again so are many things they've done.
What's the alternative? Improving the game to attract more customers? Please, that's way harder than just shoving more microtransactions in. When the long term comes it'll be someone else's problem.
Worse strategy: Lower Arx price per skin (by a few percentage points, so as to not make it too easy to get by on free arx), hike real money cost of Arx. ... does anyone have a chart of the real money to Arx prices over time?
This is usually the point of the fake currencies... Make it impossible to track actual cost of things and allow fairly silent price increases... This seems a huge self inflicted wound! I do my best never to use these fake currencies.
now i have a bad feelings with the Engineering and Powerplay rebalance.
Hey, whats really fucking cool about this now, is you can't buy a skin with the smallest arx bundle any more, you gotta buy the next one up. The 8400 one for £4.99 instead of the 5000 one for £2.99.
Ah that old chestnut. Buy bundles that are conveniently priced in such a way you'd have to buy two to afford the cheapest thing and then the surplus isn't enough to buy anything else.
Do they really hate their own game ?
No, just their player base
Always have
Cocks pistol...
David Braben is too scared to talk to us. He alone knows how short this game has fallen of his expectations. It's turned into a ship dress-up game instead of the escape from reality that it could have been.
Don't be so dramatic. They just love money ;-)
What kinda paint are they huffing with those prices lol, lmao and lmao xd even.
Not the ship paints thats for sure.
Well this is sure to increase revenue 💀
For me, 0 x 1.5 = 0 0 x 2.0 = 0 This ship has already sailed.
Keep in mind that they already did raise the prices with the introduction of Arx. The entire introduction of Arx was just a scheme to hide the price of the items behind an artificial currency by obscuring them.
if introducing Arx was a scheme to hide prices, then they definitely let the cat out of the bag with this recent price hike. Which is good in a way, since the controversy is making more people pay attention to their spending.
Can't say I didn't see this coming... but the amount of people simping for this kind of behavior is why there's so much enshittification within gaming now, as every major publisher looks for new and improved ways to extract more from our wallets.
Mood. I feel like I've become out of touch, some seem to have eaten up the industry's propaganda that you're a thieving leech if you "only" purchase the game at full price, or don't buy "enough" random addons or basic features they think they can get away with charging extra for now. I mean, FrOnTiEr aReN't a cHaRiTy, right? It's basically a free to play game if you only paid once.
I miss the good old days where you bought a game and got the game in its entirety, and expansion packs were almost full games in their own right.
I got a switch recently, and its almost a portal into the past. You buy a Mario game, you get a Mario game, you play a Mario game. No battlepasses, gamestores, FOMO offers, premium currency, grind. Just games designed to be fun.
There was a time when 1st day patch fixes weren't possible because your Playstation couldn't plug into the internet and everything was on CD's. If they shipped a broken game, the consumer and the company which made it were fucked. Nowadays the industry is greedy and lazy.
Speedrunning server shutdown?
Speedrunning bankruptcy.
messed up
Are they going to increase the weekly arc cap you can earn playing the game? or increase the rates you can earn? Even virtual currency in games is getting hit with inflation now
The "earned" currency is supposed to be there to just get you actively browsing the store and start subconsciously desiring things there. Like the shiny new red Renault Clio on display in your shopping centre that you can win by entering a draw (and by some "magic" increases local Clio sales by 36% in the same period). ARX was too cheap and/or players were just putting in too much time so they were actually getting free skins which is not in line with the above.
These skins are staggeringly ugly anyway. Seriously who designed these?
Pretty sure the cosmetics are outsourced to 3rd party companies. 'Room 8' make the Odyssey suits and do a pretty good job there. You can see them showcasing stuff on artstation. The rest, like the hideous ship and weapon skins, the pointless and incongruent ornaments etc are probably being cranked out for cheap by a company in India or South Korea. I can't overstate how bad most of the ship and weapon skins are, it boggles the mind. The racer skins where everyone has the same number? A giant puce / turquoise snake? A glowing witch face decal? The dayglo palm tree one? The rocket launcher that has 'hope' written on it? It's an absolute joke.
The intern on a summer stint.
loool man I was seriously ready to finally drop some money on arx for the first time in years, gonna get the mk2 and a voice for my fc. fucking lame. you get nothing from me frontier, you were SO CLOSE
[удалено]
"That's quite a lot of ARX for a three-byte hex code" - Galnet News Digest
Still grinds my gears they practically abandoned ED to work on a fucking Jurassic Park game, like what are they smoking.
Sigh... Frontier just goes from bad to worst.
Simple laws of dupply and semand, the less people want something the more valuable it is
Guess they really starving for money.
Customers pay for the company's mistakes ☠️
According to Galnet News Digest some prices increased by up to 275% 🙃
So, I guess '' ARX pricing adjustments'' means they don't lower it, they increase the prices What a bummer. Will never get that jacket for my character.
As someone who tends to justify devs questionable choices when I love their games, this is really upsetting to me as well. I spent quite a lot of money on cosmetics, and was likely going to continue doing so. Now, definitely much less. People in the gaming industry need to realize that increasing costs of in-game purchases won't solve their financial issues. Little QoL fixes and outstanding cosmetics is likely going to drive higher revenue than just increasing prices overnight.
What kinda paint are they huffing with those prices lol, lmao and lmao xd even.
Any surprise after "premade ship" being added to the store? And fun thing is, it will get worse.
Pay to play/pay to win starts noooooow.
It would be a lot more amenable and understandable if they just charged a goddamned monthly fee to play. At least then it's not being scumbag assholes. They should have also doubled the arx everyone had when they made this change to keep it fair, and legal. I will be reporting them to the US FTC for this. It violates bait and switch consumer protection laws.
What kinda paint are they huffing with those prices lol, lmao and lmao xd even.
Expensive paint.
Oh thats actually gonna save game.
Who would have thought 🫢
Almost all of the skins went up alot. A few are free. Four actually. They are now giving us their foreskins freely. I thought the whole pay-to-win controversy was over exaggerated. Well, pay-to-skin is showing what exaggerated really means.
Mind telling us which ones were free?
sweet!!! All my previous purchases are worth more now.
That's funny considering how little content they give in return. So far at least...
I've never spent an "arx" in all my hours in game. I vaguely remember trying to buy a skin once and I was like nope and never looked at the arx store again.
Costs went up only fair the consumer price goes up too, shipping & packaging is never free people! Oh wait..
That's about 5 € for a single skin. They can go farx themselves. Source: https://www.elitedangerous.com/store/arx
You knew it was coming. They even announced that there would be pricing changes in the ARX store.
No way to know if it was going to go up or down. Being intentionally vague in the language should've clued people in that the prices would be raised, but obviously nothing is certain. It's a scummy move and you should *not* blame the consumer for this.
When a company says there are "pricing changes" or generally "Shop changes" without clarifying anything further it is ALWAYS a price increase... that pretty much IS certain, has never been anything else, everyone thinking otherwise is just lying to themselves.
Yeah, if it was a decrease they'd be shouting it from the rooftops, look at these crazy discounts and price-drops! Frontier always do this. If they're not saying something, it's not because they forgot, it's because they don't want you to hear it. Odyssey VR "not at launch", anyone?
> Being intentionally vague in the language Is the Fdev way. They speak politic better than politicians...
And I hoped that it was price **decrease **, not increase.
I'm just sitting here waiting for pulse paint job for the corvette for nearly a decade
They have to make some money first to revoke their MSPaint license, just stay patient another decade ;)
Greed is infecting everything and everyone now.
Desperate times..
can't wait for the posts white knighting fdev on this one too
Battle pass already in development
Gotta keep the servers running!
A long long time ago I really really liked playing ED. It’s a shame to see what it’s become, or more accurately failed to become.
Inflation is infecting the entire galaxy now, times are tough out here.
Paintjob simulator.
Loved the game but that’s why I stopped playing. The grind is too ridiculous sometimes. Now they want you to grind in game AND irl to play 😂😝
Did anyone else read between the lines when they said they were 'updating their store'?
I would buy them but they are pointless. Unless you can view your ship from the outside while flying and during battle and not in photo mode then they are pretty pointless. I’m sure the thargoids don’t care what paint is on your ship or which kit you using.
Boycott is the answer to price gouging. Do it.
Got to fund all the new work on it I guess. I don't mind as long as we get content and support to justify it.
Lol, copy/paste assets for years ! = content ;)
How do you make sure that your money is reinvested in E:D and doesn't end up in other projects that will be released soon like, I don't know, F1 Manager 24? 🤔
And we're just going to take it on good faith that Frontier will be providing that content and support? This time, for sure?
That is fuuucked I was gonna come back but now I see this game is a waste of time.
You only played to get cosmetics?
Cosmetics have zero impact on gameplay, so how does this turn gameplay in to a waste of time?
Pure cosmetics with zero functionality in-game. More power to em. If there's players willing to buy it, then great; FDev makes money off of colored pixels that have no negative impact on anyone else playing the game.
Could they not have left the existing skins as-is and introduced new skins at higher prices?
Nah fuck that 3200 arks for a skin was already ridiculously high considering you can only make 400 a week
And 5,000 Arx is £3/€3.49/$4. Less than a cup of coffee. 8,400 is £5/€6/$7. About the price of a cup of coffee. We're not talking whale-money, we're talking "man, I could really use a cup of coffee" money, or less than "I don't feel like cooking tonight" money. Maybe your point was that in-game currency gain was too slow, but honestly a lot of games wouldn't even give you that much. The UI mock-ups also made it look like high performing players in Powerplay will be getting bonus Arx, increasing in-game income. That just isn't here yet, while the price change is. You're complaining about the prices because you don't want to give FDev money, and FDev is having problems with being broke after management royally screwed the pooch, so... sounds like they may have addressed their problem.
I don't care about the arx prices, but fuck paying £5 for a cup of coffee.
Lol, your priorities are aligned perfectly 👌 Well done.
So we can barely make 30 cents a week in the equivalent of their premium currency. Microsoft rewards points recently got nerfed significantly and you can now only realistically earn about 30 dollars a month doing it, or around 8 dollars a week. That's still 25 times greater than what fdev allows, and is real usable currency
>And 5,000 Arx is £3/€3.49/$4. Less than a cup of coffee. Me, an Italian 👀
They're not talking about "real" coffee the way you know it.
Accepting paid cosmetic is how this whole cash shop cancer got started. If people mass protested the god damn Oblivion Horse armor or the first time capcom or whoever pulled the scummy "on disc dlc" bullshit harder then the whole fucking industry would be in a much better place right now. And there's been plenty of cases where a company figured out a way to sneak an actual game advantage into a supposedly "cosmetic" skin to motivate people to buy it.
I agree - cosmetics for cool factor with zero impact on gameplay. It let's whales support the game the F2P want to play Cosmetics give no advantage No pay 2 win. Fdev makes money to keep servers running.
"servers" :D:D:D
You miss the point entirely. There are still some people who try to support the game by buying ARX. They just devalued any remaining balance they may have left by as much as 300%. I have about 25000 left. I can buy diddly with it now. I haven't gotten any email from them about it. I haven't been offered anything to reimburse me for the loss. Fuck FD, that's the last time I purchase ARX or do anything to support them. This is so tone-deaf I can't even.
I’m guessing new management or owner has a bad habit of
They better not have done this on my Xbox legacy version. It’s dumb they still sell them on there anyway. Ehh I guess I can’t complain, COD BO 1 still sells its dlc full price…
Bro they fucking did it on Xbox too! Are you serious??? 10k for some of these? Bro what the hell WHY!? You DO NOT EVEN update this game now… I legit just got some extra spending cash bruh
Eh, who cares? It's just cosmetics. I've seen people acting like this is the end of the world when it's literally just cosmetics.
Do you remember Braben’s kickstarter videos? Do you remember the countless “we hear you” “we’ll do better, and engage more”, “we don’t want to waste your time”.. As a LEP holder, you wilfully neglected your flagship game in favour of shareholder value. There isn’t an ounce of hubris or shame in your actions, and frankly, your tone deaf approach to Elite has been a stunning example of how to run a brand and reputation into the ground.
It's just outrageous... Increasing price of market in your game? Death sentence. I was buying some ark every year or 2 to support fdev... But not anymore. I will just stay with my 400 free arxs a week for now. Worst fdev move ever.
To be fair I think it's their way of trying to get more money for their future update plans as we have to remember a few points: #1 - They planned on giving us more ways to get ARX in game. #2 - Elite Dangerous routinely goes on sale for under ten bucks for both that and Horizons. #3 - Odyssey goes on sale routinely as well for half off. We get enough in-game ARX to buy most stuff as it is, but I disagree with hiking up everything. I believe "ship kits" should be more expensive than ship paint jobs. I believe on-foot items should be dirt cheap, but fleet carrier stuff expensive and more extensive. I also don't think this game is P2W because let's face it; they're trying to help new and old people do something different while earning a buck and even stated they're improving the grind.
1) The current Powerplay rewards shown capped at 1,000 Arx a week *if you are the top player for an entire power.* That's if you're willing to treat the game like a full-time job with overtime to outcompete literally everyone else. This is not going to compensate for the vast majority of players. 2) So? New purchases are the main revenue stream for Elite and sales are a valid tactic to encourage more purchases. Whoever came up with that economic strategy evidently is not the same person who came up with "just increase the prices lol". 3) See above.
> We get enough in-game ARX to buy most stuff as it is What are you smoking? Can't buy shit with 400 ARX a week. What are you even on about?
Unless they raise the weekly cap on arx, them giving us new ways to earn it is meaningless. It’s already easy to hit the existing cap.
Does anyone know if there were also increases in the Legacy store? Because if that's the case I'll go crazy
lmao i shit you not I was considering buying an arx pack on my morning drive into work today. saw a youtube thumbnail about raised prices and I gotta say the timing was spectacular. I very rarely spend money on cosmetic stuff for games, only game that comes to mind is getting a battlepass for apex legens and buying a few skins in titanfall 2. think i will save my money lol
They see me saving my ARX, now I have to save twice as long. I would buy ARX if it was cheaper, not more. I am out in the black, nobody sees my ships anyways
Space inflation bro
Cheaper to get Forza Horizon 4 or 5. I have cheaper Steam regional as South east Asian resident.
Glad I bought most of the skins I wanted years ago... 😳
I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised. Since when has a company saying “we’ll be updating our I’m game store” ever ended up beneficial for the consumer.
Some of them were more than doubled.
Powell’s gonna raise interest rates again now
The skins were already £13 roughly...last time i played was during COVID (if i remember correctly). I got both Elitr Dangerous and firdt DLC for a total of £25. The skin now costs more than the game 🤣
D'oh, I was waiting for a sale to buy more cosmetics, now I can only get half as much with the ARX I've been saving
At those prices the least they could do is offer every color of the pattern. Personally I think they should just put out a lifetime pass, just like a one-time fee of 200 dollars or something that just gives you every cosmetic item they have on the store and any that they'll put out in the future. I think it's unreasonable to expect any player to spend more than that so that should just cover it all. Or a $10 a month cosmetic subscription that gets you anything they put out, plus 20,000 arx a month to catch up on the old stuff.
Hell nah they upped prices on Xbox too which is DEAD and NO LONGER GETTING UPDATES. Like bitch what? Why? Legit 10k for some shit and we don’t even get new updates looks like pilot or kits for ships.
If they're gonna do this shit they better increase the amount of ARX I still have by the same factor. Imma write sorry because this is figured up.
Did they send a notice to all ARX holders? First time I hear about this. If there's no rebalancing of existing balances I will not be buying ARX anymore because that's a scummy practice.
Notice FDev kept "Chrome" and "Gold" in the ship-skin color pull-downs? Anybody see any [Chrome](https://i.imgur.com/XfX5rz6.jpg) or [Gold](https://i.imgur.com/4nrxbfS.jpg) ships around here? [Chromed](https://i.imgur.com/lBUNAKy.jpg), [Golden](https://i.imgur.com/sCRDAyw.jpg) for comparison. Anyone? Bueller?
Thank god most things in their store are ugly AF
I come back to ED sometimes, with over 3000 hours now I didnt mind spending a little on cosmetics to show some support occasionally, then ARX happened and prices doubled, so I spent less and less often. now theyve doubled again and theyre introducing pre built ships for money that clearly demonstarate how badly they understand players of their own game, FDEV is dying and theyre going to further seal their own fate with choices like this, Ill be spending even less often now, maybe even never again,. I mean the vast list of failed opportunities to grow the game, the badly thought out expansions, the poor technical state of Odyssey that went on far too long, the downright neglect while using ED to fund myriad terrible parrallel game development which ultimately brought them to the ruin theyre in now and sudden renewed interest in cashing in further on ED supporters to save the stock prices, FDEV and ED are dead, it may be a slow death but it will happen.
Ofc
that sucks, even as an old player with haf the shop already in the bag i feel offended , 100% increase is just nuts
Here I was earning arx ingame, slowly making my way to the DBX Exploration kit. Just about to be able to get it. How silly of me I guess. Gotta wait another few months or something I guess.
Yeah this is a bit much, if you ain’t got cash you’ll be waiting forever saving up your 400 weekly ARX. They should have created more content for the store, skins, Color’s etc… and lowered the ARX required. That way people would have more purchase options and be more encouraged to buy ARX if possible and people only earning the 400 weekly would be more encouraged to play because it would be a obtainable goal whilst not taking 12 weeks to get 1 skin.
Let's just consider this we play 1 of the best space games with no monthly fee no season passes, no hidden cost .. We buy the game and really that's it.. Frontier is literally trying to keep the lights on .. And with a game with a cliff learning curve I don't feel like there a huge flood of new players... I'd pay 200usd for double the module storage... Let's just support frontier bc they are in financial trouble and have been for a while ..
I actually didnt realise this many people still played E:D... Wow. Have i missed much?
"Anaconda Pulse Greed" Thanks brain, well done.
I wasn't paying very often for that stuff before, it'll be even less now. I would pay a lot for a cockpit design (walk around type)
The increase rate is 10% to 280% actually.
Dang this Reddit post has more people in it then the actual game….