No Single Player offline Mode then?

[PrometheusDarko]

I'm surprised that the mob hasn't come up with a catchy name for this. Might I suggest "OfflineGate" or something?

Honestly, I don't understand the hate stemming from this decision. It's not like the Devs sat there and said, "Let's make a decision we know full well will be super unpopular because eff those guys!" I'm sure that this was done as a final resort of "Welp, offline just isn't going to work with this architecture. Let's let them know." And it's being met with pitchforks and torches. People will in the same breath moan about how it's not a true MMO, and then whine that it doesn't have singleplayer. Where are all the complaints about it not being an MMO, eh?! There truly is no pleasing some people. Hopefully after release this community's toxicity dies down. I don't want to become a LoL community, where every single decision the Devs make in an attempt to fix the game is questioned and met with pitchforks and torches.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Good Morning Mr Brookes, I hope you have enough coffee/tea at hand for what is liable to be a tough day,

I understand that an evolving offline system would be impractical, but the expectations for it were it to be mainly static, with possibly updates to download.

If the evolving universe and associated systems to produce that, made an offline impossible, this has had to been a known design conflict for a bit longer than this week surely, could you have not softened the blow rather than sneeak it into an almost footnote?

I do applaud your online vision but the offline version even if static was a key selling point to me, not just because of internet access, but the ability to enjoy Elite and your hard work without being tied to a balance sheet analysis of the frontier hardware and bandwidth budgets.

Is the potentaill static offline universe truely impossible, can the calls to make changes not follow a null object pattern? I guess I'm pleading for a possibility that offline may reappear down the line or as a just before the plug is pulled on the servers option

To make that happen we'd essentially have to create two games. The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few.

The decision wasn't made this week, we've spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a way that would allow us to support offline play - however the answer is no we can't.

Michael

 

[WeirdWizard]

I suppose the silver lining is that if Frontier don't provide an offline server then someone will reverse engineer one and when that happens it much more likely to be open source and therefore infinitely moddable than if Frontier themselves released one. Although I would still prefer an official offline server... with modding support please

 

[Yellonet]

A sad reality

The broken promise of offline mode makes me fear for the longevity of the game.

This is what I have against all games that depend on some online service (steam, game servers and so on):
We as players are totally left out to the game company of when we can play, how we can play and for how long into the future the game will work.

What if FD disappears? The servers won't be around then.
What if they're bought up by some big business? They might decide that Elite isn't all that important so they put the game world on crappy servers with chocked network connection, then after a few years they just let it die.

Older but good games are still played to this day, even though the company behind the game is long since gone. Will we be playing this in 10 years? Even in 5?

Who knows. All we can be sure of is that it is not up to us to decide...

 

[CMDR Byrt Makklin]

I'm surprised that the mob hasn't come up with a catchy name for this. Might I suggest "OfflineGate" or something?

Come on, mate. I love your posts (any time I see your avatar I expect a witty treat), but this isn't a mob. It's a lot of annoyed people who actually have a fair point.

 

[Quietman]

I'm oversimplifying but in terms of generation the procedurally generated objects don't take up that much space - they exist as identifier numbers/code. What is then populated into the game - buildings, flora, fauna etc all require models and textures, behavior and interaction code, animations etc etc. The procedurally generated 'objects' don't take up much space - the seed data to make those objects 'real' within the game world takes a great deal of space.

This is not how true procedural generation works at all, what you are describing is some sort of hybrid mish mash.

Real procedural generation, builds EVERYTHING in memory, vertex buffers, textures, scene graphs, skinning matrices, shaders, spline paths, animations, etc, using algorithms, (Fractal, FBM, perlin, etc), seeds and sometimes LUT's for variance.

http://pcg.wikidot.com/

In fact with today's generation of hardware you don't even need to pre-compute these GPU specific data structures in Local or GPU memory, using techniques such as Ray Marching you can generate unbelievably detailed scenes completely on the fly in real time in the Pixel/Fragment Shader without any data structures whatsoever purely algorithmically. The following link is from one of the main contributors to the field and if you have any interest in the field of real time Graphics, it's definitely worth checking out his entire site.

http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm

P.S. I have greatly simplified the wonderful and complex world of procedural generation

P.P.S. Remember real procedural generation is basically an ultimate form of compression, anyone or any algorithm that says it is PG but requires anything more than a minute amount of storage space, is either a hybrid or a sham.

 

[ICDP]

To make that happen we'd essentially have to create two games. The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few.

The decision wasn't made this week, we've spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a way that would allow us to support offline play - however the answer is no we can't.

Michael

Can those who want a refund get one please?

 

[Hexcaliber]

Not looking good I am afraid,

The whole tone was about managing expectaions for a launch that is missing many features. It even seems to hint that there will be no more ships at launch, everything coming after launch

Just what features are missing, I assume you have a copy of the game that will be available on the 16th, because I sure as hell do not. Outside of offline mode, you have no clue what features will or will not be mia when the game releases. The newsletter makes note of the fact that 3.9 will be a significant update AND they still have a few surprises in store before the 16th. Yet you folks continue whining and droning on about the game not being this, and not being that. You are getting tiresome and the game is not even released, wait until the 16th before spouting your drivel on the forums.

 

[Tim Wheatley]

To make that happen we'd essentially have to create two games. The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few.

The decision wasn't made this week, we've spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a way that would allow us to support offline play - however the answer is no we can't.

Michael

Ouch. Ok. Thanks for the honest answer.

Follow up, if I may... Do you think, way down the road when you guys are wrapping up and done with ED, the server files would become public domain or available in any way?

 

[-o-]

As I ponder to why this thread was moved from the 'General' area to the 'Beta Discussion' area when it ha nothing to do with the Beta version, it dawned on me that the reason it was moved was because FD are actually testing the idea of removing the offline version with the community.

Then the caffiene kicked in, and the suppressive conspiracy theories kicked back into life.

 

[khaitom]

yes got that - thanx.. but how much of one.. all the time or intermittent?

Nobody knows! Outside of Frontier, its all assumption and bluster here.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Can those who want a refund get one please?

You can put a refund request in through the store.

Michael

 

[Tim Wheatley]

I suppose the silver lining is that if Frontier don't provide an offline server then someone will reverse engineer one

I think that would be exponentially unlikely

 

[SJT]

Doesn't really matter, but from experience I would suggest they made the choice after a lot of debate, and after they were absolutely sure it wasn't going to work they intended.

It does matter because people obviously continued to buy the game after the decision was made. I don't care if there is no explicit mention of offline mode at point of sale. It was taken as fact on these very forums that there would be an offline mode. A forum moderator (yes I know they are volunteers but they have a Frontier avatar) was constantly saying, right up until the 9th of this month that there will be an offline mode and even quoted a conversation he had with Michael Brookes to back this statement up. Frontier have done absolutely nothing to contradict this. So, unless the decision was made on the 9th of this month, I consider that Frontier have been deceitful for monetary gain.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Ouch. Ok. Thanks for the honest answer.

Follow up, if I may... Do you think, way down the road when you guys are wrapping up and done with ED, the server files would become public domain or available in any way?

I've no idea at the moment. We're planning on supporting this game for some time to come.

Michael

 

[Kicks]

Come on, mate. I love your posts (any time I see your avatar I expect a witty treat), but this isn't a mob. It's a lot of annoyed people who actually have a fair point.

It is unfortunate, and believe me - if I had backed the game because it had an offline component, I'd be genuinely upset also. What isn't necessary, is calling FD liars, or "shady", or "no better than EA", or "Well if they've done this, they'll screw us out of other things"... this is mob-logic, and perhaps I over-generalised a bit too much. Reading Micheal's responses, it makes sense. A feature they wanted, had to be dropped. Don't get me wrong, it is unfortunate.

Fly safe, commander.

 

[WeirdWizard]

To make that happen we'd essentially have to create two games. The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few.

The decision wasn't made this week, we've spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a way that would allow us to support offline play - however the answer is no we can't.

Michael

I suggest perhaps you guys should of made it public when the decision was made rather than waiting till so close to release

Anyway if you guys can't figure it out (or just don't have the time/resources) then how about releasing all the specs on the packet structures and let the community come up with an offline server? Could earn you a lot of the lost reputation and trust back.. I know, I know... But it was worth a try wasn't it? Frontier could be the first after all.

 

[Frank]

I'm not angry at this revelation. I'm just disappointed. I'm getting very disillusioned about the whole Kickstarter funding method.

The next time some Kickstarter proposes " - NO DRM " as a bulletpoint on the end wall of their barn, I shall wait to see if they add "without cause"

 

[Sylv3r]

To make that happen we'd essentially have to create two games. The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few.

The decision wasn't made this week, we've spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a way that would allow us to support offline play - however the answer is no we can't.

Michael

Ok Mickael its understandable but it was promised and thats why we are disapointed.
You said you need to create a separate game to be able to give us the offline mode.
That mean offline mode will never happen ?
Thanks for reply

 

[SJT]

As I ponder to why this thread was moved from the 'General' area to the 'Beta Discussion' area when it ha nothing to do with the Beta version, it dawned on me that the reason it was moved was because FD are actually testing the idea of removing the offline version with the community.

Then the caffiene kicked in, and the suppressive conspiracy theories kicked back into life.

It has obviously been moved to reduce the exposure and remove it from the sight of of those still contemplating purchase of the game. More deceit.