No Single Player offline Mode then?

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Even better, let's have a chat with the author behind space engine. That engine already have many different galaxies, based on procedural generation, where everything is seamless right down to each and every object:

Yes but that Galaxy doesn't actually do anything does it?
 
It will be interesting to see FD response tomorrow, I am sure it will affect many peoples decision whether to go for a refund or not.

I hope FD re-evaluate the cost of this decision. Goodwill is an actual thing, it is measured by accountants.

I suspect for disappointment for active posters here FD won't provide any change in their decision. Also refund is no slam dunk deal.
 
I am tired now, never read so much for ages.
Very inspiring to see so many members fighting the corner for the members who absolutely need Offline Mode.
Keep up the good work in trying to convince ED to rethink the Offline decision.
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
As a kickstarter backer totally unaffected by these developments I am astounded at Frontiers decision and chosen method of announcement on this issue. I have held fire for a couple of days on posting on this issue because I really wanted to let it sink in and post a measured response accordingly.

As to the reasons the decision was made, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that, however, as others have said, I am struggling to believe that it only became apparent that Single Offline wasn't viable in the last few days and this close to release. Surely it must have become apparent sometime ago that this was going to be the case, and as such, it should have been communicated to us, via the forums, and in the appropriate newsletter, as soon as it was so much as a possibility, let alone a 'tough decision made'.

Whether or not anything was 'promised' is fairly moot at this point, the point is that Frontier staff, (at least some culpability), and moderators, (not their fault), and the community at large thought there was the option of Single Offline still at 15:40 hours on Friday just gone, this is unacceptable. Whilst some of the people claiming they will take x, y or z legal action, report the issue, or in some way derail Frontiers launch event are, in my opinion, overeating, some of the people defending Frontier on this decision are equally as lamentable.

@ Frontier - You must realise, (and surely do), that crap sticks and becomes hard to wash off, some of those that have posted in this thread and others have been your most ardent backers and supporters, many of them have defended your policy and track record, sometimes rightly, sometimes not so much so. It was never their job to do so, nor was it requested by Frontier, however, do not underestimate what the good 'word of mouth' aspect has done for your name, your brand and your game. Also, do not underestimate how damaging it is or how long it will take to wash the stains out of the laundry from this mess of an announcement.

The omens are worrying to say the least now, we learn that the statement 'we are making the game we want to play' now actually reads, 'we are making a platform that may, one day, become the game we want to play'. We learn that a decent sized part of the proposed features may well permanently be on the cutting room floor, and, we have our faith shaken that if something as fundamental as an entire game mode can suddenly be 'not viable' then what next? It seems if something like that can be dropped then no proposal is safe, like it or not, some trust has gone Frontier, of course not from all, but from a percentage of fans, some heavily involved financially, be it in shares, pledge level or just 'word of mouth positives'. The problem is Frontier, that this is starting to smell like you are in a bit over your heads, be it financially or simply from an overreaching point of view, 'we will release when its ready' seems to have gone out of the window, it wasn't 'ready' before Fridays announcement and is even less 'ready' if fundamental features are being canned.

To those of you that cannot play without offline mode, or are at least affected by it, to a larger or smaller degree, you have my empathy and hopes that Frontier will change their minds on this, to posters arguing with those affected, some of you should take a step back and think, you really should. Many of us are backers of Elite Dangerous, very nearly all of us are supporters of Frontier, we of course can have differing views on Supercruise and mining, without doubt, but the rug being pulled out from under the feet of some of us affects us all, it may be you or me next, it may be a feature we consider vital next, it may be us asking for a refund if this happens again. We should stand as one here, a community united, because this has the potential to hurt us all.

Very good post, very politely worded. Till the 22th I was between hope and fear. No longer...

Like I said before I wanted to order 2 extra T-shirts, keyhanger and an extra copy (if possible hardcopy)of ED. Basically everything they have except for the MT paintjobs. That has just been cancelled/axed.

I can´t with a honest concious recommend ED to anyone, not anylonger. NOT before the 16th of Decemberer. When we know for sure what the plaform or perhaps game is what will be, is released. Sad times, for me and üerhaps the community in general - though I can not speak for the rest of us...

What I´m still hoping for is an official statement by DB wrt to the offline mode. Is it totally 100% cancelled, is there a limited form in ED 1.x.x. Will there in the future be an offline mode - if so when. Given all the commotion a clear statement by the Director and main shareholder himself seems to bin order. If only from a damage control point of view.
 
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Maybe I am missing the point but what is the big deal about having to connect to a server to login and play a game? Does your Antivirus software not already login and update to the internet, are you working away from the internet at most times? Do you not need an interenet connection to keep the game up to date? do you not need an internet connection to discuss topics on the boards? I personally don't see a problem with a model that has the Solo play for those single player minded and an open play for those that want it. Maybe i missed the point further back in the 274 pages but if you don't have an internet connection nowadays then your PC is useless. Mountains and molehills comes to mind.

Keep going Dev's you are doing a great job! look how far we have come in the past two months. Gameplay content is where the devs should be spending their time not creating multiple games.

The deal is to be able to play it without net connection, it's just as simple as that. Reasons can vary. Some have unstable connections, while others can be frequently AFK during their playsession, it all had been mentioned in this topic many times. I can add another reason, an offline mode can be used to play with mods. Sure, now the modding is out of the question too. Well, that was also mentioned before.

And there's another deal. FD promised offline mode, and now they say, it was rooted out not this Friday, but a time ago. So, why did they tell us about that only now? Only a month before the release? This is not good at all.
 
Just as a general note, as with pretty much everything on the web these days, video game news sites are metric driven to a degree that would make your head spin. If you want more pressure to be applied it might be an idea to go find a news item on this, then comment as much as is reasonable and hit F5 or stay engaged on a session to an unreasonable degree. Because the gawker/gamespot/etc kids are certainly being measured on how much interest the stories they write on this attract.
 
do you have any how costly (not just in terms of money) the effect of forking a codebase of an incredibly complex software system is? this is not simple stuff.

"so just release a private server with hardcoded missions"

my god!

i am a software developer (a very good one too) and i can tell you that having to handle (to use your example) two or more different codebases for almost-similar things is a nightmare. any changes you make in the primary codebase (lets call that one the multiplayer) have to be backported into the secondary codebase (offline). that sounds nice and easy right? no it's not.

any changes that you have to make to the secondary (offline) codebase in order to support offline play, not only have to be compatible with the primary codebase, but now have to be tracked as completely separate items in and of themselves. this is not a trivial matter!

considering how busy all of the FD devs are, your request for FD to "just release a server" is *literally* more than doubling the amount of work for them to do. when new algorithms, features, gameplay modes, whatever are added to the primary codebase, they they have to be re-worked, re-factored, backported into the secondary codebase. this is not trivial at all, because of all the changes and bugfixes that were made to the secondary codebase in order to support offline play.

during the development phase, specs change, things come up, and hard decisions have to be made. FD probably could have actually gone with offline play for launch, if they had been able to hire close to double their existing # of developers, project managers, QA testers, etc etc. but that is something they obviously weren't able to do.

OK. Lets assume you are correct and I have no reason to doubt you. They just learned last week offline was a no go? If it was that difficult to include an offline game, for whatever reason, they number one should have known it was this difficult and made it clear from the begging they may not be able to do it. If they didn't know this then they are incompetent. If they did know this they lead a lot of us on, to put it mildly.
 
Final cut.

It's not a game.

Ok, so I've decided that even though Elite and its following games mean so much to me I have to give up on ED. I spent $165 on the kickstarter and saw such beauty but No game. I think its a disgrace to lose offline which lets face it is what a game actually is !! I'd love to play online but you know what I've decided to go the refund route. How dare a company change the vision under our feet this way. There is so little in this game so far apart from beautiful graphics and sound to advance to us customers a FUTURE version of Elite. Procedural game my butt.

I think I'll go install Frontier Elite 2 again.. At least I can play it on the plane tonight.

Frontier, fail. Sorry. Truly !
Gary.
 
Course it isn't they have a server we could probably run on a normal pc, they just ain't sharing it :)

Which is no surprise really if the majority multiplayer audience have their experience compromised. The galaxy and persistence engine is the result of a multimillion pound investment on FDev's part and will be unlike anything else out there (apart from maybe one other), how much have we invested in comparison to warrant that kind of access?
 
Yes but that Galaxy doesn't actually do anything does it?

Well, as Synchromesh writes, it is offline, besides that running on a single pc, and could be made into a game just as capable as ED (minus the dynamic part), if the author and enough people wish to.
 
I am tired now, never read so much for ages.
Very inspiring to see so many members fighting the corner for the members who absolutely need Offline Mode.
Keep up the good work in trying to convince ED to rethink the Offline decision.

If only that was the only motivation.......
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
It's not a game.

ED is also not a game atm. You said it yourself countless times, we are testing something. After the vertical slice,Magical Gamma Update and perhaps even till the 16th we are only testing a skeleton of something which will be a great game. If anything according to what I read in the newsletters/Michael Brookes, its a platform, not a game...
 
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