Yesterday saw Frontier Developments enrage the Elite: Dangerous playerbase when it announced plans to sell pre-built ship bundles in its cash shop, with many players calling the move tantamount to pay-to-win. Shortly after that reveal, Frontier posted a follow-up explainer that gave complete details about two of these upcoming cash shop bundles.
The two pre-built ship bundles that were shown off were a laser mining jumpstart package that grants buyers a Type-6 transport fitted with two engineered mining lasers and several other standard modules for effective eating of space rocks, and the earlier referenced anti-xeno Chieftan that fields weapons and fittings designed to scan, attack, and defend against Thargoid enemies.
While some of the weapons and modules in these packages are linked to unlocking specific engineering upgrades, most of the fittings appear to be the sort that are readily available — and of a lower-quality class than what would be more widely used.
Player reaction to this in-depth look seems to mostly agree that these bundles are beneficial and skirt P2W; a couple of reactions go so far as to say that the Chieftan build is “garbage,” while others argue that easing the onramp to more interesting activities and getting more people in-game is beneficial. Still others continue to push back, offering thoughts on alternative cash shop items or stumping for reduced grinds instead. Players also bring up the unaddressed point of selling the upcoming Python Mk II ahead of its availability for in-game credits.
On the subject of reduced grinds, the post also provided some general thoughts on how FDev hopes to make the engineering treadmill less arduous, with ideas like reduced material needs, more material rewards from missions, and more backpack capacity. The studio is quick to point out that these are just a few of the areas it’s investigating and that improving engineering’s grind will likely be a multi-update process, but it also resolves to follow player feedback along the way.
