See, now, this is where I take umbrage in these discussions.
I am not personally affected by the online/offline point. I'm always online. But I understand those who are (I've been in that position before). And, it was promised as part of the KS FAQ, as part of videos, and forum posts from the staff. I've also read Michael's reasons for the change, and I do understand them (since I work in the industry).
However, this was not "a simple decision". This was not "decided just recently". There is simply no way a competent developer could not see this being infeasible months out. None. You make structural design changes, you obfuscate things necessary to running the client, and you make design decisions which are specifically counter to the offline mode. This wasn't "patched in at beta 3". This was part of key design decisions.
Now, if Fdev were incompetent developers, I'd understand. Someone "whoops" committed branch to master and now they are stuck with it. Rolling the change back would require another 4-6 days of backbreaking work for a team of 20 guys to fix the entire system. Ouch. Then a few weeks to figure out how to communicate this to the clients.
Problem I see is, they aren't incompetent developers. Maybe someone didn't get the memo, or whatever - I'm not saying they had secret agendas and whatnot. But Michael's posts were pretty clear and seemed like he was fully aware of the design, and this would have been a known issue as of Beta 1, perhaps Beta 2.
Even though this has zero effect on my enjoyment of the game, and I have zero stake in this, I feel for the people who read the KS page or even the FAQ here (which I did before purchasing Beta access) and it was very clear that there was offline functionality (albeit limited). I can't imagine the ire of the guys who were told that during the KS and pledged a few hundred dollars to see the game succeed, or even thousands. This wasn't vague, this wasn't "we hope to", it was stated as fact in the several places I read it.
Additionally, if the "offline people" are "the minority", then some of the people defending the decision here are hypocrites. Back on page 83 of this thread, one of the white knights was stating in one post that this affected very few people, and then three posts later stated he was afraid they would all refund and hurt the game release. That's just straight double-talk - "not enough affected to make a difference" and "doesn't want the refunds to impact the game".
I'm not screaming that I never will support them again, or ragequitting, or refunding. I love the game, and will play it for quite a while, I'm sure. I don't, however, support bad development practices. And this is certainly a doozy.
This was a bad, bad move. You don't pull this at zero hour with your clients and announce it hidden in a newsletter. And the people defending this are simply white knighting that which isn't excusable. This wasn't something designed and whoops, zero hour, we can't add bobbleheads and Christmas lights in the cockpit, sorry. This was a base design decision, and as a developer, I empathize with the why, but it should have been communicated much, much earlier.
At this point, they need to deliver what they promised - even if after launch. And if they "can't", figure it out. Don't just say "we're not going to". That's what starts this type of furor, and it really needs to stop as a practice in game development. The design decisions, not the players affected, are what is wrong here. If offline was pushed as a feature back to Mac release, or July, you'd see some grumbles. But straight out cancelling a promised feature...
EDIT: I've read a few more of Michael's posts that I missed in the 15 or so pages that happened since I read this thread, and I see more about how they were dealing with the feature. Got it. And I've been in that position with clients, personally. So, I'm a little less "bad development practices" and a bit more "this should have been discussed with the customers earlier, when it became a problem". He makes replies I have had to do in development as well, and he's trying to be forthright, and I respect that. The path on this makes more sense. It should, however, have been brought up as a discussion point much, much earlier.
And doing it this close to launch, though... that's certainly worthy of most of the negative posts.
Well put, some rep for you.
