Elite: Dangerous Pricing & Preorders

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Elite: Dangerous - Pricing & Preorders

Frontier Developments is now offering pre-orders for Elite: Dangerous on the games Online Store, and offers a few bonus items to give as an incentive.
Elite: Dangerous - Mercenary Edition

Pre-order now to guarantee your Mercenary Edition featuring exclusive digital content

Be the first to get your hands on the Elite: Dangerous Mercenary Edition. Loaded with digital extras this pack is only available to customers who pre-order Elite: Dangerous before release date.

Full list of contents:
• A digital download Elite: Dangerous
• Your very own Eagle fighter ship docked in a secondary location in-game
• Exclusive pack of ship paint jobs
• A ‘day one’ ship decal
• A digital players guide
• A digital concept art book
• Plus loads more digital goodies to be announced over the coming weeks.

Anyone who has already pre-ordered the final release version of Elite: Dangerous will be eligible to receive the mercenary edition extras when the game is released.

Availability: Coming 2014
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They also released a new thirty second TV trailer.

 
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So if anyone is reading this thread it seems the game will be entering Beta Phase 2 on September 30th, The full press release is in the the spoiler.

Elite: Dangerous Beta 2 Announced for 30 September.

Major gameplay additions and 30th Anniversary celebrations.

Cambridge, UK. 19 September 2014. Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV) today announced the release date of Elite: Dangerous Beta 2 as 30 September.
Elite: Dangerous Beta 2 is a major gameplay upgrade to the Beta:

  • Combat ratings from ‘Harmless’ all the way up to ‘Elite’.
  • Reputations per system and galaxy-wide that influence attitudes and prices offered to you.
  • Ability to discover and explore and scan new systems and sell the data on them.
  • Detailed system maps.
  • Around 500 additional star systems to explore.
  • Lakon Asp Explorer ships added.
  • Much greater variety of upgradable Life Support modules, Engines, Hyperdrives, Power Distributors, Sensors, Shield Generators and Cargo Racks for all ships.
  • Ships are subject to gradual ‘wear and tear’.
  • New weapons including mines and a new non-lethal missile-deployed cargo hatch disruptor for piracy.
  • Outposts (small, exposed ‘roadside café’ stations in remote locations)
  • Occelus starports, a version of which can move around for early civilization of new systems and space tourism.
  • Visibility of other ships in supercruise, and track others through supercruise and hyperspace.
  • Newsfeeds about events from the rest of the galaxy and player activity in your local system.
  • All backers names (from the appropriate crowd-funding reward tiers) have been added to the NPC naming database.
It also includes a host of other improvements and optimizations including additional rock, ice and metal planetary ring types, a lot more music and some optional ‘simulator’ tutorials.

SLI/Crossfire support allows play in 4K ultra-high definition (with appropriate hardware).

David Braben, CEO of Frontier said, “We are excited for people to start playing Beta 2 on 30 September – it's another major step forward in development, and the team continues to work hard towards the full release later this year.”
Elite: Dangerous will be released in Q4 2014.

As part of the 30th Anniversary celebrations of the release of the original BBC Micro Elite in 1984, Frontier is offering free copies of the original game on their store along with a PC BBC Micro emulator and there will be 10 days of reporting by Galnet, the Pilots Federation’s news network, from Elite: Dangerous in the year 3300 of the escalating tensions between the Federation and the Eranin system as Eranin celebrates its 30 year anniversary of independence from the Federation.

Players can also buy a wireframe paint job for their Elite: Dangerous Cobra Mk III until 30t h September from the Elite: Dangerous store
 
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VERY interested in the game but those rewards aren't nearly enough to make me want to buy it before the reviews are in.
 
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This game is really hard to play with keyboard and mouse...

And I haven't played it with a joystick, so I don't know what that will do to the gameplay. o.o
 
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It looks good but I'll wait for its big brother star citizen. Too many great kickstarters coming out to spent time on just a good game :)
 
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Any time I read this discussion's title, I read : "dangerous pricing" ...
 
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So here is another update for the thread as Frontier Developments have launched the third beta version of Elite: Dangerous this week.

Elite: Dangerous Beta 3 Available Now

Mining, multiple ship ownership and interdiction headline extensive new features in Elite: Dangerous Beta 3.

Cambridge, UK. 29 October 2014. Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV) has released Elite: Dangerous Beta 3.

The third stage of Elite: Dangerous’ Beta test has rolled out to players, unlocking even more of the real Milky Way for exploration and introducing long-awaited features including multiple ship ownership and mining.
  • Player-driven interdiction. Players can now interdict NPC ships, pulling them out of faster-than-light travel back into normal space along with the player.
  • Philanthropy missions added.
  • Fuel scooping from stars added. Keep a close eye on your temperature gauge as you refuel from the blazing surface of stars.
  • Asteroid mining added. Cut metal and rock from asteroids using the mining laser.
  • New ships added: Imperial Clipper and Federal Dropship.
  • Multiple ship ownership. Long requested by the community, players can keep multiple craft docked at starports, allowing for reserve ships dedicated to combat, exploration, trading and more.
  • Additional ship images added to loading screen .
  • Status panel now shows faction reputation.
  • New in-game controls to allow rapid switching between display screens.
  • Outpost landing pads now reflect low gravity environment.
  • Play area expanded to over 2,400 systems and 869,000 cubic light years of playable space.
  • Improved galaxy map, with partial name searching, range display and route finding.
  • Planet visuals overhaul. Planet surface types, liquids and atmospheric colours now reflect their chemical composition.
  • Planets display volcanic features and complex craters can create dust ejecta. Crater frequency is dependent on atmosphere thickness.
  • Ice planets now have fracture features.
  • All planets now have dynamic ice caps and liquid levels.
  • Asteroid belt clusters added.
  • Nebulae added, visible in the sky and the galaxy map.

Look to the weekly Elite: Dangerous newsletter this Friday, 31 October for an important announcement about the next stage of the Beta. A full newsletter archive is available.

Elite: Dangerous' Beta 3 is available to play now for £50 ($75, €60) through Frontier’s online store. A discount for existing backers of the full game is applied on checkout, making upgrading easy.

Elite: Dangerous will be released in Q4 2014.

The pre-order exclusive Elite: Dangerous Mercenary Edition includes the full game, an additional Eagle fighter, ship liveries, Day One decal and other digital goodies for £35.00 ($50, €40) Pre-orders receive a £4.99 discount on the final release price of £39.99 ($59.99, €49.99).

Players who pre-order the Mercenary Pack can upgrade to immediate Beta access at any time for £15.

All backers who have purchased Beta access or higher will receive the Mercenary Pack – including the final game – upon release in calendar year 2014.
 
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Aubrielle said:
This game is really hard to play with keyboard and mouse…

And I haven't played it with a joystick, so I don't know what that will do to the gameplay. o.o
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I'm playing it with a Saitek X-52 Pro - and it makes a MASSIVE difference, quite frankly.

I find it nearly unplayable with mouse/keyboard - though I guess I could adapt - but with my Saitek, it's a completely different game. The default control layout for this joystick works very well - and you can do almost everything without touching your mouse or keyboard. It's pretty neat.

There's something tremendously intriguing about this game, though I expect to forget all about it once Star Citizen comes out. That might be a very long time, though.

For now, it's defintely an Eve Online for people who like to actually feel like they're flying their ship ;)
 
Poking around to see how the game is going a bit…

Oh wow, they use the actual Milky Way Galaxy to do this! Hmmm, I wonder how? I kinda doubt all 400 billion stars they want to deal with have been studied carefully enough to even know for sure if they are binary or not. Ah, Wikipedia has the low-down on that: 150,000 stars based on real data, the rest procedurally generated based on scientific predictions.

I guess they've been doing that for a while, too. Elite shows up a lot on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction
 
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A game called "Elite : Dangerous Pricing" ? Is that an economy simulation, lol ? ;)
 
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That beta sure is expensive! I bought into the even-more-expensive GalCiv3 beta but that also gives you all the expansions they make for the game. As far as I know, this one just gives you a few days head start.
 
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Yes, I mentioned it in the Star Citizen thread. I do consider that something of a broken promise, and I'm not happy about it, but I didn't back it so I can't really complain.

It would be insane if Freelancer were to go down in history as the greatest single player, free roaming space sim with an actual story. It's good, but it's not that good, and it's a genre with loads of potential.
 
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It's definitely a broken promise and bad communication. But I tend to focus on what's there instead of what's not. They made this decision because they finally realised it would be impractical to provide the offline version without it being a major obstacle to the game.

What I don't understand is why they didn't realise this earlier - and if they did, why they weren't honest about it.

I really hope Star Citizen announces a similar thing as soon as they figure it out, if that's going to happen.

People are jumping up and down looking for something tangible as the reason for hating Star Citizen. So far, they don't really have a reason that makes sense. Giving them one would mean an endless stream of bile.
 
Ah, sorry. I must've missed it. :) Didn't see it mentioned here yet.

DArtagnan said:
It's definitely a broken promise and bad communication. But I tend to focus on what's there instead of what's not. They made this decision because they finally realised it would be impractical to provide the offline version without it being a major obstacle to the game.

What I don't understand is why they didn't realise this earlier - and if they did, why they weren't honest about it.

I really hope Star Citizen announces a similar thing as soon as they figure it out, if that's going to happen.

People are jumping up and down looking for something tangible as the reason for hating Star Citizen. So far, they don't really have a reason that makes sense. Giving them one would mean an endless stream of bile.
Click to expand...

Broken KS promises are piling up. First Larian that decides to back out of implementing day/night cycles and NPC schedules, now this.

I've not really been following this one though, so I am not fully up to speed. This game is basically an MMO then?
 
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Hmm, it says in the development blog:

Going forwards, being online lets us constantly both curate and evolve the galaxy, with stories unfolding according to the actions of commanders. Exploration is also a key factor, too, and it is important that what a single player explores matches what other players explore whether single or multiplayer – a complex, coherent world – something we have achieved. Galaxy, story, missions, have to match, and it does mean the single player has to connect to the server from time to time, but this has the added advantage that everyone can participate in the activities that can happen in the galaxy. A fully offline experience would be unacceptably limited and static compared to the dynamic, ever unfolding experience we are delivering.

Highlight is mine. So, there will still be a single player, it just dials home once in a while?
 
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wiretripped said:
Ah, sorry. I must've missed it. :) Didn't see it mentioned here yet.

Broken KS promises are piling up. First Larian that decides to back out of implementing day/night cycles and NPC schedules, now this.

I've not really been following this one though, so I am not fully up to speed. This game is basically an MMO then?
Click to expand...

They will continue to pile up so long as KS projects depend on sales pitches.

I don't know if people understand this or not, but for any given game that's developed with publisher funds - or through other non-consumer investors - there will be goals and ambitions that won't ever be reached.

Developers will "promise" to deliver and they will fail - over and over. I doubt there's a SINGLE publisher funded title in existence that didn't have something like that happen.

The difference with KS is that these "promises" are made available as plans and people latch on to them as something that can't possibly go wrong.

I'm not sure what needs to happen here, frankly.

Should developers say: "we plan to implement offline singleplayer - and we FULLY intend to do it - but we don't actually know for sure if we can?"

The last part would have to be standard for every single goal they have in mind.

Is that better? What would it mean, exactly?

I'm not sure. Most people would probably take it as a promise - and they'd support it anyway. Some might not, but that would also mean a lesser game overall.

So, I don't know what's the better alternative.

But if people refuse to accept that things never go perfectly and according to plan - and that there's such a thing as limited resources and games that HAVE to release before money runs out - then maybe that's what needs to happen.
 
wiretripped said:
Hmm, it says in the development blog:

Going forwards, being online lets us constantly both curate and evolve the galaxy, with stories unfolding according to the actions of commanders. Exploration is also a key factor, too, and it is important that what a single player explores matches what other players explore whether single or multiplayer – a complex, coherent world – something we have achieved. Galaxy, story, missions, have to match, and it does mean the single player has to connect to the server from time to time, but this has the added advantage that everyone can participate in the activities that can happen in the galaxy. A fully offline experience would be unacceptably limited and static compared to the dynamic, ever unfolding experience we are delivering.

Highlight is mine. So, there will still be a single player, it just dials home once in a while?
Click to expand...

Not quite, as other players will likely be able to affect the experience on some level, albeit relatively minor. They'd be able to influence the economy - and stuff like systems explored by other players would probably be part of that one player's universe as well.

Otherwise, they'd have to, somehow, keep track of each individual player's universe separately, which I can't see happening.
 
wiretripped said:
Well well. I wonder how that will be received.
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I have informed them that I am displeased. I expect the decision will be reversed imminently. :p
 
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