Today we are very excited to announce the launch of a new stand-alone product, Elite Dangerous: Arena. Arena is the PVP mode already in Elite Dangerous so all players who own Elite Dangerous or Elite Dangerous: Horizons will already have access to it. Simply select Arena (previously labelled CQC) from the in-game main menu to play.

However, we believe Elite Dangerous: Arena is a compelling game in its own right and want to offer it to players whose main goal is to play fast paced PVP space combat action. This will open Elite Dangerous to a whole new group of players, all of whom you can play against in the Close Quarter Combat Championships (CQC) in Arena mode in Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons. So if you haven’t played CQC already we have a number of challenges starting today that you can join in with.

Elite Dangerous: Arena is available to new players right now on our store and on steam for £4.99/$7.49.

Click here to learn more about Arena.

Mayhem Launch Celebrations

To celebrate today’s launch we decided to run a series of events for everybody who can play CQC to get involved in.

- CQC Mayhem – Visit our blog post on the Elite Dangerous community site to see our huge schedule of Mayhem events, and to find out how you can get involved.

- Official Launch Livestream – Three hours of CQC with the developers starting at 6PM GMT on our official YouTube Channel. Come and test your skills against six different members of the development team, and be in the chance of winning prizes for taking part.

- The Gladiators Challenge – During the first four weeks after the launch of Arena (16 February – 15 March), three named accounts beginning with ‘FDEV’ will be playing CQC on an ad hoc, but regular, basis. If you manage to get in a game with them, and take a screenshot, you will be entered into a prize draw. There will be 5 amazing prizes up for grabs in the draw including...

• 2 x Premium Elite Dangerous goodie bags, including a cap, a beanie, three faction mugs, signed artworkEvery paint job in the Elite Dangerous store is also up for grabs.
  
• 2 x Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season passes.
  
• 1 x Every paint job in the Elite Dangerous store!

The draw will be done on March 16.

To be in the chance to win, all you have to do is get into a CQC match with either FDEV Rhino, FDEV Wolf or FDEV Jet, take a screenshot of you playing against them (perhaps the leaderboard at the ened of the game), and email it to community@frontier.co.uk with the subject line ‘CQC Gladiators’. Your email address will be added to the list of entries, and winners will be drawn at random at the end of the four weeks.

Today we are very excited to announce the launch of a new stand-alone product, Elite Dangerous: Arena. Arena is the PVP mode already in Elite Dangerous so all players who own Elite Dangerous or Elite Dangerous: Horizons will already have access to it. Simply select Arena (previously labelled CQC) from the in-game main menu to play.

However, we believe Elite Dangerous: Arena is a compelling game in its own right and want to offer it to players whose main goal is to play fast paced PVP space combat action. This will open Elite Dangerous to a whole new group of players, all of whom you can play against in the Close Quarter Combat Championships (CQC) in Arena mode in Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons. So if you haven’t played CQC already we have a number of challenges starting today that you can join in with.

Elite Dangerous: Arena is available to new players right now on our store and on steam for £4.99/$7.49.

Click here to learn more about Arena.

Mayhem Launch Celebrations

To celebrate today’s launch we decided to run a series of events for everybody who can play CQC to get involved in.

- CQC Mayhem – Visit our blog post on the Elite Dangerous community site to see our huge schedule of Mayhem events, and to find out how you can get involved.

- Official Launch Livestream – Three hours of CQC with the developers starting at 6PM GMT on our official YouTube Channel. Come and test your skills against six different members of the development team, and be in the chance of winning prizes for taking part.

- The Gladiators Challenge – During the first four weeks after the launch of Arena (16 February – 15 March), three named accounts beginning with ‘FDEV’ will be playing CQC on an ad hoc, but regular, basis. If you manage to get in a game with them, and take a screenshot, you will be entered into a prize draw. There will be 5 amazing prizes up for grabs in the draw including...

• 2 x Premium Elite Dangerous goodie bags, including a cap, a beanie, three faction mugs, signed artworkEvery paint job in the Elite Dangerous store is also up for grabs.
  
• 2 x Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season passes.
  
• 1 x Every paint job in the Elite Dangerous store!

The draw will be done on March 16.

To be in the chance to win, all you have to do is get into a CQC match with either FDEV Rhino, FDEV Wolf or FDEV Jet, take a screenshot of you playing against them (perhaps the leaderboard at the ened of the game), and email it to community@frontier.co.uk with the subject line ‘CQC Gladiators’. Your email address will be added to the list of entries, and winners will be drawn at random at the end of the four weeks.

As seen from our forums.
___________________________

Greetings commanders! We have an update on the way this morning. We expect for the downtime to last for up to an hour starting at 10AM GMT+0.

Below are the changes! Enjoy!


General Changes
- OSX: Fix OSX users not being able to save bindings
- Stop excessive wheel damage causing an insta-kill on the SRV
- Fix for an error in Ship Landing Sensors
- If a POI spawner gets replicated to us and we are on a platform that does not support it, then put it into an invalid state which will cause it to do nothing
- Fix for data link scanner not scanning when the option 'Firing deploys hardpoints' is disabled
- i Sola Prospect in the Brestla star system now always stocks all ships and modules
- Never display the online/offline status of members of large private groups
- Fix the level of demand shown in Commodity Markets when the stock level reaches 0
- Various server performance and reliability improvements

Close Quarters Combat
- Fix an error on the server when a Deathmatch game starts
- Fix the splash at the end of a game showing incorrect results
- Fix the team balancing to account for player rank correctly
- Fix a server error for when a player joins shortly after the lobby enters the initialising state
- Make sure we don't mark a CQC game as about to end when its in the loading state
- Adjusted how teams are set up in CQC games so make them more balanced
- If someone joins a CQC match when the current game has less than 1 minute left, then have them wait on the lobby screen for the next match instead of joining a game about to end
- Hold on to CQC spawn points for longer to avoid spawning on top of a ship
- Lowered the min damage threshold for getting an assist on a player in CQC
- Remove the first blood bonus from capture the flag mode
- Remove the highest score bonus from free-for-all games as the highest score will be the winner, so they ended up double dipping for XP when winning
- When you accept a pending CQC invite, then decline any other invite you have
- Fix CQC Loadouts not always being saved

Translations
- Updated translations for some languages.

Server Side Changes
- Fixed some missing Powerplay system effects
- Updated galactic mean commodity prices

As seen from our forums.
___________________________

Greetings commanders! We have an update on the way this morning. We expect for the downtime to last for up to an hour starting at 10AM GMT+0.

Below are the changes! Enjoy!


General Changes
- OSX: Fix OSX users not being able to save bindings
- Stop excessive wheel damage causing an insta-kill on the SRV
- Fix for an error in Ship Landing Sensors
- If a POI spawner gets replicated to us and we are on a platform that does not support it, then put it into an invalid state which will cause it to do nothing
- Fix for data link scanner not scanning when the option 'Firing deploys hardpoints' is disabled
- i Sola Prospect in the Brestla star system now always stocks all ships and modules
- Never display the online/offline status of members of large private groups
- Fix the level of demand shown in Commodity Markets when the stock level reaches 0
- Various server performance and reliability improvements

Close Quarters Combat
- Fix an error on the server when a Deathmatch game starts
- Fix the splash at the end of a game showing incorrect results
- Fix the team balancing to account for player rank correctly
- Fix a server error for when a player joins shortly after the lobby enters the initialising state
- Make sure we don't mark a CQC game as about to end when its in the loading state
- Adjusted how teams are set up in CQC games so make them more balanced
- If someone joins a CQC match when the current game has less than 1 minute left, then have them wait on the lobby screen for the next match instead of joining a game about to end
- Hold on to CQC spawn points for longer to avoid spawning on top of a ship
- Lowered the min damage threshold for getting an assist on a player in CQC
- Remove the first blood bonus from capture the flag mode
- Remove the highest score bonus from free-for-all games as the highest score will be the winner, so they ended up double dipping for XP when winning
- When you accept a pending CQC invite, then decline any other invite you have
- Fix CQC Loadouts not always being saved

Translations
- Updated translations for some languages.

Server Side Changes
- Fixed some missing Powerplay system effects
- Updated galactic mean commodity prices

As seen from https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=230150
__________________________

Greetings Commanders,

We wanted to get in touch to let you know about a few changes that we will be making tomorrow and bring you into the conversation with a little bit of early information.

Since the launch of Elite Dangerous Horizons we have had an incredible response from Commanders in the game. The number of amazing videos, screenshots, player events, CG’s and missions have truly taken our breath away. We are so delighted with the way that the community have taken to the game and we’re super excited for the future releases coming to Horizons throughout the season.

The Elite Dangerous community is truly the most incredible group of players we could possibly ask for. We value the thoughts and feedback from our community and we’re always looking at how we can take that feedback on board. This is why we wanted to give you these details ahead of time and be as upfront and clear of the details as possible. We are all a part of the long term development of the game and we’re delighted to be on this voyage together.

Since its launch we have heard some players say they feel confused by Elite Dangerous Horizons and how the purchasing and upgrading of the game works. Thanks to this feedback we are going to changing the way that it appears in the store and on steam.

To reduce confusion, Horizons will be added as a season pass DLC for Elite Dangerous, rather than an individual product. It’s a relatively small change but it means that on steam and on our store there will now be three options

• Elite Dangerous
  
• Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass
  
• Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition

The deluxe bundle will include the base game, Horizons season pass DLC and some digital goods.

This will be beneficial in a few ways. First of all it will unite the steam community. This means that we will only have 1 community hub. This is something players have asked for and we’re happy to listen. It also means that the products are clearer for people to understand, reducing confusion, which can only be a good thing!

However, this does mean that Steam Horizons players will have the Horizons portion of their steam game time counter wiped as it moves back to 1 hub (the in-game counter will still work). Nothing will be effected in game but we wanted players to understand the changes and impact fully.

In addition to these there are a couple of other changes we will be making at the same time. The base price of the Horizons season pass DLC will be £25 (or equivalent in other currencies) and will not include access to Elite Dangerous, this must be purchased separately. It will still include the entire season of content coming in Horizons. This means that the current loyalty discount to Elite Dangerous: Horizons will no longer exist as all existing players will be able to upgrade directly to the Horizons season pass.

Finally, by way of a special thank you to everyone who has already bought Horizons before these changes are made, we are giving you an unreleased Asp Explorer gold paint job. And don’t forget, you still have access to the Cobra Mk IV, and this will apply to all players that buy before the changes go live tomorrow – new players that get the new deal will not get it.

Here’s a look at the wonderful golden Asp which will be coming to all existing Horizons players, and those that buy before tomorrow. :)



Once again, I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your incredible continued support and for joining us on this incredible journey. We’d love to get your thoughts and feedback as always so please do let us know below and we will be on hand to answer any questions you might have.

Thanks

As seen from https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=230150
__________________________

Greetings Commanders,

We wanted to get in touch to let you know about a few changes that we will be making tomorrow and bring you into the conversation with a little bit of early information.

Since the launch of Elite Dangerous Horizons we have had an incredible response from Commanders in the game. The number of amazing videos, screenshots, player events, CG’s and missions have truly taken our breath away. We are so delighted with the way that the community have taken to the game and we’re super excited for the future releases coming to Horizons throughout the season.

The Elite Dangerous community is truly the most incredible group of players we could possibly ask for. We value the thoughts and feedback from our community and we’re always looking at how we can take that feedback on board. This is why we wanted to give you these details ahead of time and be as upfront and clear of the details as possible. We are all a part of the long term development of the game and we’re delighted to be on this voyage together.

Since its launch we have heard some players say they feel confused by Elite Dangerous Horizons and how the purchasing and upgrading of the game works. Thanks to this feedback we are going to changing the way that it appears in the store and on steam.

To reduce confusion, Horizons will be added as a season pass DLC for Elite Dangerous, rather than an individual product. It’s a relatively small change but it means that on steam and on our store there will now be three options

• Elite Dangerous
  
• Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass
  
• Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition

The deluxe bundle will include the base game, Horizons season pass DLC and some digital goods.

This will be beneficial in a few ways. First of all it will unite the steam community. This means that we will only have 1 community hub. This is something players have asked for and we’re happy to listen. It also means that the products are clearer for people to understand, reducing confusion, which can only be a good thing!

However, this does mean that Steam Horizons players will have the Horizons portion of their steam game time counter wiped as it moves back to 1 hub (the in-game counter will still work). Nothing will be effected in game but we wanted players to understand the changes and impact fully.

In addition to these there are a couple of other changes we will be making at the same time. The base price of the Horizons season pass DLC will be £25 (or equivalent in other currencies) and will not include access to Elite Dangerous, this must be purchased separately. It will still include the entire season of content coming in Horizons. This means that the current loyalty discount to Elite Dangerous: Horizons will no longer exist as all existing players will be able to upgrade directly to the Horizons season pass.

Finally, by way of a special thank you to everyone who has already bought Horizons before these changes are made, we are giving you an unreleased Asp Explorer gold paint job. And don’t forget, you still have access to the Cobra Mk IV, and this will apply to all players that buy before the changes go live tomorrow – new players that get the new deal will not get it.

Here’s a look at the wonderful golden Asp which will be coming to all existing Horizons players, and those that buy before tomorrow. :)



Once again, I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your incredible continued support and for joining us on this incredible journey. We’d love to get your thoughts and feedback as always so please do let us know below and we will be on hand to answer any questions you might have.

Thanks

Greetings Commanders,

We've pushed out a new update today, below is the change log. We expect for the servers to be down for one hour while we perform the update. As always, we hope to come in under that time. :D

General fixes

• Translation updates
  
• Fix for settlements and barnacles sometimes not appearing

Server fixes

• Allow local news articles to only be shown at certain markets within a single starsystem
  
• Misc reliability fixes when awarding Trade Vouchers to Wing members
  
• Disregard background sim consequences for crimes committed against Powerplay NPCs
  
• Filter out background sim local news reports from more than 30 days ago
  
• Various background sim reliability improvements

Greetings Commanders,

We've pushed out a new update today, below is the change log. We expect for the servers to be down for one hour while we perform the update. As always, we hope to come in under that time. :D

General fixes

• Translation updates
  
• Fix for settlements and barnacles sometimes not appearing

Server fixes

• Allow local news articles to only be shown at certain markets within a single starsystem
  
• Misc reliability fixes when awarding Trade Vouchers to Wing members
  
• Disregard background sim consequences for crimes committed against Powerplay NPCs
  
• Filter out background sim local news reports from more than 30 days ago
  
• Various background sim reliability improvements