I feel like this is a dying gasp effort to keep the game online. I actually feel bad about it.

Elite is one of two games where I’ve ever spent money on cosmetics. I spent like $60 on paint jobs because I actually wanted to support the game.

I’m not sure what to think about this, because normally I hate “pay to win” and cosmetic shops alike. I wish Elite just had a subscription model and could support more stable servers or something. I don’t know how they expected to put an always-online game on sale for $5 all the time and keep it profitable without eventually running into a brick wall where they’d need to choose between shutting down and pissing off players.

I genuinely hope this somehow turns out to be worth it for them.

I was about to argue that this isn’t “pay-to-win”, as just having the ship doesn’t automatically make you better in-game, but…

https://www.elitedangerous.com/store/product/python-mk-ii-standard && https://www.elitedangerous.com/store/product/python-mk-ii-bundle

If the pre-built ship is destroyed you will be able to redeploy it at no cost, but any additional modules you have added will require in-game credits to retrieve during re-buy.

does this mean that the arx-bought pre-built ship has essentially 0 Cr rebuy? Sounds kinda low-bar entry for no-risk pvp or griefing, if so.

Pay-to-win as critic has lost meaning as people just argue “you don’t necessarily win” while missing the point that it gives you an advantage which in turn makes it more likely to win.

So let’s call it pay-for-unfair-advantage. P4UA in short.

Haven’t played in forever, but this seems like they’re selling an A-rated, non-engineered ship. Don’t think this is pay to win. I don’t like it, but the game has been going for 10 years, and Frontier doesn’t seem to be doing great financially, so it might have well been this or shutting it down entirely.