What would you like FD to do regarding offline mode?

[CaptainKremmen]

I've meditated on this OFFLINE issue at some length, and I've changed my point of view on it. My personal opinion is now that the technical decision to cut OFFLINE mode was the right one.


It's pretty obvious that communication was handled badly (cue Nicholas Cage meme), but I'm leaving that big part out of my personal deep thunks. I'm a project-obsessed techie to my bones, so I'll focus on my core competency, and save you all the grief that would come from any incompetent forays into assessing product marketing, PR, community liaison, online company communication, blah blah blah.


Yeah, so, my thoughts wandered into just what it is that FD's back-end servers do.

Beer-mat list follows:

• Stellar Forge - an on-demand star system generation server component
• Universal Cartographics - storage of every player's explored system data
• System Map - an on-demand service that hooks into both Stellar Forge and Universal Cartographics
• Legal Status mechanism - server-based storage of player's WANTED status and outstanding bounties in every system.
• Background Event Generator - creating content and events in the populated systems
• Bulletin Board - server-based creation, revision, removal of Bulletin Board missions
• Ship Positioning mechanism - server-based method of positioning player ship w.r.t. frames of reference. Patched into Stellar Forge.
• Miscellaneous save data - server-based store of credits, per-ship module priorities, fire groups, power distribution, state-of-health, cargo, ship loadout, ammunition levels, fuel levels
• Dynamic Market Simulation - server-based trade processing for the populated galaxy.
• In-Ship Transaction mechanism - server-based storage of fines, bounty vouchers, combat bonds, completed missions, outstanding missions. Patched into Legal Status mechanism, Bulletin Board, Dynamic Market Simulation.
• Galactic News Network - server-based news updates on ship movements, market updates, events, etc. Patched into the Dynamic Market Simulation, Background Event Generator.

That's just off the top of my head. There may be more, or links/dependencies may be different.

Feel free to draw your own join-the-dots picture of Elite's back end. Yours may be better than a bland bullet-point list - especially with liberal use of red and green crayon.




The fact is, an OFFLINE mode demands a repackaging of every single one of those things... and the inter-module communication... in order to bundle up the lot of it into a standalone client.

If cutting modules was attempted as a means of simplifying the task, the question becomes, WHICH modules are discarded (but have to work in online modes), and how are the inter-module communications affected by their absence (but keep working correctly in online modes)? As development progressed, I expect those questions were all building up on a to-do list for OFFLINE mode... but the answers would not easily present themselves.




I expect that, when the big "Choose Items For Release" sessions drew to a close, there was one big, unresolved list of items - the OFFLINE Mode Integration To-Do list.

What would it have taken to deliver OFFLINE mode? Well, having made my bullet point map of the ED back-end, I can take a guess:



A ridiculous amount of work would be required by the design and development team to rearrange, chop, slice, dice and repackage things into the client build...
...with the curious aim of making a less content-rich OFFLINE game galaxy...

And all the while, sucking limited resources away from the online feature set...
...thereby producing a less content-rich ONLINE game galaxy.



The decision was presumably taken that retaining the OFFLINE Mode Integration To-Do list was simply not feasible in project terms, and would inflict very real damage to the structure of Elite Dangerous - client, back-end, player experience ONLINE.

It would undoubtedly impact the timelines of all planned modules and releases, by drawing away personnel, time and so on.

And, to hazard a guess, I expect it was the team's assessment that the OFFLINE game would be sub-standard, and in no way comparable to the content and feeling of the game they wanted to make.



That's my assessment, anyway. I haven't concerned myself with how or when FD made the assessment, whether they could have built things differently up to that point, how they could have communicated more effectively, or any of that. I'm just looking at it from a perspective of technical demands, resourcing, timelines and hard-nosed business decisions based on "where we are today". How you ended up somewhere is one thing. What you do about it is another.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Additional musings...

I cast my mind back a whole week (hard, I know), and remembered...

• Beta testers' complaints that the systems beyond the core were dull to fly around - no bulletin board missions, no wars, no big medical emergencies, famines.
• Complaints that the Eranin conflict ("prototype" injected event) was static, and felt dull and fake.
• Complaints that market activity felt flat and dull, without an obvious element of background galaxy simulation.
• Declarations that finding the 50th pretty star system was not as interesting as the first, for some explorers.
• Statements that NPCs were little more than a mild irritation, and did not excite or connect the player with the experience of flying around a living galaxy.

I'm not concerning myself with which are valid, or how many people feel that way about each point. Fact is, ALL of these things are perfectly feasible to rectify, given the resources. To me, they aren't much more than a frank assessment of a "young" game world.


However, it's hard for me to argue against the idea that an OFFLINE variant would start out with a lot less "life" and spark, from the get-go.

Attempting to bring that OFFLINE world to market in the same client? It's clear to me that it would require time and talent that could otherwise have been directed towards adding more "life" and spark to the ONLINE world. That ONLINE world has a massive advantage of a high-powered back-end... those inter-connected modules from my first list.


So continuing with the OFFLINE Mode Integration To-Do List would have meant delivering both a lack-lustre OFFLINE galaxy, and prevented the ONLINE galaxy from reaching its full potential.


So, again, it would have come back to a decision to deliver two lesser modes, or to put 100% effort into making the best ONLINE Elite Dangerous possible.



That's how it looks to me. And, yep, it's nice sometimes to have a built-in set of technical blinkers. In my line of work, you really need 'em, at times!

 

[Dash]

I voted for eventually, before they shutdown the game.

By then though, I'd rather a pessimistic peer-to-peer system that allowed us to continue playing whilst instances were still operating with each other. I guess all the data in the galaxy would probably have to go static. But in another 30 years, it'll be cool to be able to fire up an instance of the game on my brain-embedded AR chip to run a PC emulator or whatever.

I fired up Elite the other week, it was good fun to play - I'd like to do the same when I retire with E.

 

[Erik Marcaigh]

I think you need to watch Tim Wheatley's video. He's not "crying about it because he can" Instead he's given a good response to the decision, and the way it was announced. Perhaps you'll understand why many feel so strongly about it when you've watched it:
-
[video=youtube_share;LA-ZvZJ9fvw]http://youtu.be/LA-ZvZJ9fvw[/video]

Given that it's 17+ minutes long, then no, I don't particularly want to spend that kind of time. It's like a post that's a wall of text. If you can't make your point concisely, then you will lose the attention span of your reader/listener. Heck, even speakers at graduation ceremonies don't talk that long. At least not on ONE subject.

I just listened to the first 3 minutes of him talking about his background. Unnecessary. He's also rather monotone, good for trying to go to sleep, but not listening to.

I speak to my clients about taxes here in the States, and I know that conciseness counts. I used to go into longer explanations 18 years ago and then I'd see their glassy-eyed stares and knew I'd lost them.

 

[bonsek]

Frontier needs to focus on releasing something that will get good reviews.

At this moment it seems fully offline is not fully baked and releasing something to the public like that will actually hurt the game as all the reviewers will give a low score for the offline mode.

If I remember the newsletter said they are not ditching offline but you will have to connect from time to time. They should be clear about what does "from time to time" mean. Once a week? Once a day? every hour? Each time you access the market?

I wish they said that perhaps fully offline will be delayed like the expansions in order to make it work, if they can make it work that is.

 

[Erik Marcaigh]

Frontier needs to focus on releasing something that will get good reviews.

At this moment it seems fully offline is not fully baked and releasing something to the public like that will actually hurt the game as all the reviewers will give a low score for the offline mode.

If I remember the newsletter said they are not ditching offline but you will have to connect from time to time. They should be clear about what does "from time to time" mean. Once a week? Once a day? every hour? Each time you access the market?

Market access and any other access (bulletin board, events, etc.) See here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&page=106&p=1002341#post1002341

I wish they said that perhaps fully offline will be delayed like the expansions in order to make it work, if they can make it work that is.

Michael's response to that: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&page=99&p=1002131#post1002131

 

[bonsek]

Market access and any other access (bulletin board, events, etc.) See here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&page=106&p=1002341#post1002341



Michael's response to that: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&page=99&p=1002131#post1002131

Thanks Erik for the links. Trying to hunt down official FD responses in 300 page thread is crazy.

 

[Stirling89]

I think our best chance is that FD gives us the ability to host private servers. A real offline mode is probably off the table.

 

[Erik Marcaigh]

Thanks Erik for the links. Trying to hunt down official FD responses in 300 page thread is crazy.

The best way to find them is to click the little orange Elite symbol to the left of their post #. You jump to each one of their responses!

 

[bignick277]

Disclaimer:


I originally put this in it's own thread, but it was told that it was closed because there are already other threads on the topic. So I'll put it here. This is the letter I will be sending to customer services. Just decided to put this here for the community to see where I stand and the reasons for it. Please don't turn any discussion started here into an argument. This is only meant to have a civil and intellectual discussion regarding an issue considered to be extremely important by many in the community. Not for flaming or insults to be thrown around by some members simply because they have differing opinions. I know this is a highly charged, hot button issue, but please keep it civil.

To those who try to respond to me with TLR, don't bother replying to me. I won't respond to someone with a legitimate discussion regarding a legitimate issue if you don't bother to read this post to have a civil informed discussion about what I've written within the context that I've tried to convey my thoughts.

To those who claim FD never used offline play as a selling point nor claimed there would be an offline mode in ED, I simply refer you to ED's Kickstarter FAQ, which has it explicitly highlighted in plain english. This where I got that information and played a role in my decision to purchase the game. If they had never promised offline play (ie not requiring server communication to play), I would never have been under that impression in the first place.

Quoting Kickstarter:

"How will single player work? Will I need to connect to a server to play?


The galaxy for Elite: Dangerous is a shared universe maintained by a central server. All of the meta data for the galaxy is shared between players. This includes the galaxy itself as well as transient information like economies. The aim here is that a player's actions will influence the development of the galaxy, without necessarily having to play multiplayer.


The other important aspect for us is that we can seed the galaxy with events, often these events will be triggered by player actions. With a living breathing galaxy players can discover new and interesting things long after they have started playing.


Update! The above is the intended single player experience. However it will be possible to have a single player game without connecting to the galaxy server. You won't get the features of the evolving galaxy (although we will investigate minimising those differences) and you probably won't be able to sync between server and non-server (again we'll investigate).


Last updated: Tue, Dec 11 2012 9:56 AM +00:00"

On one final note, as I said before, I'm happy to have a civil conversation, but I simply will not respond to any inflammatory replies. It's that simple. So if you're not willing to have a civil discussion regardless of whether you have a differing point of view, then don't bother to reply to my post. It's that simple.



Thank you to the community.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________________


To whom this concerns,


Ok, this is going to be a long one and I’m going to be covering several points and have several questions regarding my order. So please read this in full. I don’t want a quick robotic template reply sent back to me. I want a real reply covering my points and actually answering my questions. How you handle this issue and how you answer my questions will carry considerable weight on whether or not I decide to demand a refund on my order. I’m not coming to you as a prospective customer. I’m coming you as an actual existing customer you are at risk of losing. So please take this seriously.


When I initially placed my preorder for this game, one of the main deciding factors was the promise of the inclusion of a fully offline mode. As of this week, you are now claiming to drop that promise. You claim it’s not suitable because the single player would be limited when compared to your “vision” of the online universe. For one, this is a very poor argument. The whole idea of having a single player mode is so we don’t have to be online to play it. That’s the whole point of a single player experience. But, let’s go more basic than that. The pure and simple fact is that you made a promise when you were begging for money. Not only during the Kickstarter, but throughout the entirety of time that you’ve been selling your game on your website. Which has been for more than a year now. Throughout all that time, you’ve been promising that the game will be able to be played entirely offline. And now, one month before release, out of the blue, you go “yeah, you know what. We’re not going to honor that one”. You may think I’m being facetious, but that’s exactly what this looks like to pretty much everybody, regardless of whether or not they decide to demand a refund. You got your money. You think you’ve locked anybody who paid you more money in order to play the Beta from getting a refund, because you’ve “delivered something”, in this case the beta. And you’re shirking your responsibility to fulfill your promises/commitments established in a binding contract at the point of sale. Not to mention that this is false advertising in its most basic form. On the false advertising principle alone, everyone has the right to demand a refund (regardless of whether or not they are a Beta customer), because you are not delivering on a promised feature. A feature, you were actively using as a selling point and as a result, did influence peoples decision to purchase. As such, everyone who wants a refund due to this issue, has the right to get one. Make all the excuses and justifications you want, that’s just the way it is. That’s what you’ve done and those are the repercussions of that decision. You are in the wrong here.


That being said, I do not want to jump the gun and demand a refund without giving you the opportunity to make this right. I’ve preordered the game and the expansion pass totalling 70 quid. That’s a lot of money for me to spend on an online only game. Something I’ve never done before. I’ve spent that much on a fully offline game before, but never on an online only game. And there’s a good reason for that. How can you guarantee me that you will still be here in 10 years time, where even if (god forbid) you go under I can still play your game. What about if I’m traveling or away from an internet connection, or hit hard times and can’t afford an internet connection or the internet connection I have is so poor and/or unreliable it makes the game unplayable. Why am I not allowed to play a game I legally paid for, just because I don’t have a useable internet connection at the time. Why do you think you should dictate when I can and can’t play a game I’ve purchased. This decision turns your game into a volatile commodity. There’s no security in this purchase, because there’s no guarantee of access to the game, except in circumstance which you now dictate. I can’t justify that as a purchase. Especially at the price you charged for it. Even with Star Citizen, which I backed for considerably more, a primary reason why I made the choice to back it was because they promised fully offline, fully online and host your own servers. If they reneged on that promise, I would have to get a refund from them as well.


Also, however you want to play this with your wordplay, it will only ever be considered DRM by the community. Which you already clearly know, the gaming community is staunchly against and you knew this from the very beginning or you never would have made it part of the sales pitch in the first place. Even after you seeing every F2P games pitches and online only games on Kickstarter face plant and fail miserably when you made your first pitch. Because no gamers out there want to back an online only game. Do not play ignorance here, because nobodies buying it. You knew then and know now that this is and has been a hot button issue for years. Or you never would have used it as a selling point in the first place. This is why Planetary Annihilation made its funding goal as well. And when they released PA and failed to include the offline mode before putting up a new Kickstarter, the backlash they received and subsequent failure of their new pitch hit them harder than they ever expected. They’ve since released the offline servers as a result of that backlash from the community. Why is it ok for you to do this and not them? So you really need to consider this very carefully. This decision will not just affect your bottom dollar right now for the refunds you’re going to have to give back now. It’s going to affect anything you do and the way the gaming community reacts to you for years to come. This is not a threat. It’s a warning about the facts of this issue and its repercussions.


For myself alone, I have to think about this from the point of view of what I consider acceptable behavior by developers. Is it ok for you to make a promise on a hot button issue in order to entice sales only for you to renege on those promises just before release? Not because you’re not capable of providing the fully offline experience you promised, but because it doesn’t quite fit in the “vision” you are now wanting to hold the game to. Meaning this is not a technical infeasibility (which wouldn’t be believable to begin with), but a choice. An active choice that you are making for everyone else, without giving your customers the benefit of a choice on that matter. If I do not hold you accountable for that, what’s to stop every other developer starting a Kickstarter from doing the same thing. If I simply allow you to keep my money and not demand a refund, it’s as if I’m saying this kind of behavior by developers is acceptable when it’s not. That it’s ok to make promises you have no intention of keeping in order to generate sales. And yes, that “is” how it sounds. You are making a choice to drop offline. You are choosing to not fulfill your promises. So yes, that’s exactly how bad it sounds, because that’s exactly how bad it is. So I now have to properly think about this. I need to figure out where I stand in this debate. Do I want to just accept whatever you throw at me and let you get away with any decision you make regardless of the ethical implications of those decisions, simply because I desperately want to play your game? Whether these decisions affect me directly at this moment in time is beside the point. These kinds of decisions affect more than just me. It affects many people, including many people I know personally (including family) who have very poor internet connections. And while they may not affect me right now (because I actually have a good internet connection at the moment), they could very well affect me in a negative way in the future. Then there’s the matter of trust on top of that. How do I trust you as a developer from this point on. How do I trust any current promises and/or future promises you make going forward. So I have to decide what I want my money to represent. What I want my support to stand for. I can’t simply think about myself on this issue.


But look I get it from a gameplay perspective. I can see what you are aiming for. You want continuity between the fully online and single player gameplay modes. But see here’s the thing. You’re not supposed to dictate a single player sandbox environment to that level. Single player is supposed to be completely offline and not dictated by a server. Going on what you’ve described before in regards to single player trading, I have to ask the question of why a single player’s trades in single player mode would impact an online economy. How is that fair to players playing in the online economy subject to the online community (piracy, trade etc). Why should fully online player’s gameplay be impacted by single player games they can’t interact with. I may have misunderstood that comment, but that’s the understanding I walked away with from that article. But as I said, I got the idea of what you are wanting to achieve with the single player mode. But as I said before, it’s the users that should be able to decide how they want to play the game. So if you wanted a single player game also dictated by online events, you should have created 3 play modes instead of 2. One fully online, one semi-offline as described in your newsletter and one fully offline using a template universe with a template economy. Every time you start the game it should check for updates and update the game accordingly and give you the choice of the 3 play modes. But if unable to find an update or no internet connection is available, then only give the player the option to play the game fully offline and in the fully offline mode give the warning that the game will play differently in fully offline mode and will not be transferrable to semi-offline and fully online modes. This people wouldn’t have had an issue with. This would have been a better way of handling the issue you ran into when comparing modes to your “vision”. This is what’s called a compromise. This is where you get what you want in a single player mode, and we gamers get what we want with the option of a fully offline mode.


The next thing I have to wonder is how this decision affects the future of your expansions. If you want continuity at all times within your universe between everyone in the community, how will that affect your future expansions. Because with this always online requirement, you have effectively turned this game into a Guild Wars style MMO. Which means for the level of continuity you claim to demand, you would need everyone to always be playing from the same rule book. Making paid for expansions kind of impractical, as Guild Wars 1 proved when they tried to do the same thing, resulting in one game being more like several different but similar games instead of one big game. So how will this affect future expansions? Even if I don’t decide to demand a full refund, is there even any point to having the expansion pass or should I just get that part refunded. So that’s another question that is now thrown in the air that I need answered regarding my order.


As stated earlier in this long-winded letter. I don’t want to jump the gun. I want to give you the opportunity to make this right. What I’ve highlighted above is not only my concerns for my specific purchase, but for the ethical concerns and implications I have to consider regarding my current stance on my order. As such, I want a proper response addressing these issues and whether there’s any room for compromise on your part. As it stands, I can’t justify 70 quid for an online only game by a developer that doesn’t honor its promises/commitments. I won’t cancel my order immediately, but if I have not received a proper response to this and if you have not made this right by the community by December 10th 2014, then I will be forced to cancel my order. That is not an ultimatum nor a threat. This is just where I currently stand for all the reasons stated above. I sincerely hope this issue can be resolved amicably.


Thanks in advance,


- BigNick277

 

[Zephyriel]

While I agree with a lot of points you make, I'm sorry but your letter comes off as extremely pedantic. Despite your final comment it feels like you threaten FD to ask for a refund if they don't reconsider their decision. Sorry but you alone are not that important to them. Understand that with a 3000+ posts thread on the subject, everything you say in your letter has already been said, dissected and discussed to death already. And Michael Brookes quickly dismissed people who were making threats like you are now, by simply pointing them to the refund page. If Frontier are to change their mind regarding offline mode, it will be because there is a huge demand for it, not because YOU wrote a long letter "giving them the opportunity to make this right" so that they don't lose one customer.

They didn't drop offline because they wanted to deceive players, they did it because right now they can't allocate the resources towards it, due to the huge pressure to release the base game in december. What you're asking is simply not possible at the moment. What we can ask for, is that they do their best to make it work once they're happy with the game's release, and once they have shown the world their vision of Elite Dangerous with its dynamic online galaxy. While (or before) they start designing and producing the first paid expansions, if there is a huge demand for it they might choose to allocate some resources to develop an offline mode that will make everybody happy. What we can do in the mean time is trying to convince them that many people want this. This was the point of this thread and poll, and I sure hope it's also the point of many of the people still feeding the big "no offline" discussion thread.

 

[NeoRacer]

I doubt it for a long long time, by then most will have moved on or be playing ED2. Thats usually how it works.

I voted second one down. I feel sorry for those that are disappointed that there is no offline SP.
At some point in the future the servers will shut down, so it would be nice to keep playing after that. Support of the game long-term is a vital element for FD to get right, certainly now, anyway.
Also mod making would have been nice to include, but I don't think that's a goer now either.

Oh, good poll btw.

 

[sngerous]

Good poll! Now i'm relieved that it's only 5%.
"I'd like FD to start working on an offline mode as soon as possible, but I'll play online anyway." <- these are the people who embarrass themselves.

 

[Zephyriel]

Sngerous > I don't see why. It's not my opinion, but I understand people who can play online but simply don't like it and would prefer solo. Still, between playing online and not playing at all, they'd prefer online.

As for the 5%, we're in 2014 so it's reassuring that only a minority of players don't have a good internet access.

 

[Wolfs Spirit]

i spend (wasted)1500 bucks for a brand-new system and planned to buy and modify and old arcade flightsimulator , i just canceled yesterday 4k monitors for it and other hardware replacements , deeply dissapointed , maybe in a far, far future if they bring a physical copy with offline mode i will restart the project ... too bad , but i thankgod listened to my gutfeelings and they told me not to buy anything more yet untill release.
so i voted for the offline copy ofc , to get back on this poll ... untill then i just play Oolite and wait till there comes a new elite kind of game worth my money...

 

[cpbtrading]

i spend (wasted)1500 bucks for a brand-new system and planned to buy and modify and old arcade flightsimulator , i just canceled yesterday 4k monitors for it and other hardware replacements , deeply dissapointed , maybe in a far, far future if they bring a physical copy with offline mode i will restart the project ... too bad , but i thankgod listened to my gutfeelings and they told me not to buy anything more yet untill release.
so i voted for the offline copy ofc , to get back on this poll ... untill then i just play Oolite and wait till there comes a new elite kind of game worth my money...

Evochron Mercenary, could give that a go. Its from 2012 I think, but it plays well, although graphics are not near ED quality really, but not bad. Trading, Bounty hunters, pirates, mining, etc its all in there. Mind you it would be, it was based on the Elite style model, I think. Also seamless space to planet landings. Worth a look anyway, I've played it a while and its pretty interesting, to be fair, better in many respects than ED. But really that's only because ED is not really fleshed out yet, much more to come after release (fingers crossed).

 

[Dissonance]

I loath playing online with people: I've had too many experiences with griefers in the past and I would prefer not to have my experience ruined by other people. I have also found one or two of the developer replies to be downright shady with regards to the response of this. But I get it, the game is what the developers want it to be, and that is their prerogative. Still, when the servers inevitably shut down, I want to continue playing. I don't think that my enjoyment of the game should be tied to the financial future of a company. That's just me, however, and people are welcome to their own opinions.

 

[Wolfs Spirit]

Evochron Mercenary , never heared of it and looks promising , i'll try that.
I don't care much about the graphics , i played my 1st games (at home) back in 1984 and before that on arcade machines lol, it's all about good gameplay for me and if frontier would redo the 1st elite again in wireframes etc , i would still buy it.
people are spoiled by graphics at the cost of good gameplay , i rather have a good game and story as ubergraphics and a boring game

 

[OVMorat]

I loath playing online with people: I've had too many experiences with griefers in the past and I would prefer not to have my experience ruined by other people. I have also found one or two of the developer replies to be downright shady with regards to the response of this. But I get it, the game is what the developers want it to be, and that is their prerogative. Still, when the servers inevitably shut down, I want to continue playing. I don't think that my enjoyment of the game should be tied to the financial future of a company. That's just me, however, and people are welcome to their own opinions.

So play in Solo mode. Where's the problem?
The lack of Offline Mode only affects people who don't have an internet connection.

 

[cpbtrading]

Evochron Mercenary , never heared of it and looks promising , i'll try that.
I don't care much about the graphics , i played my 1st games (at home) back in 1984 and before that on arcade machines lol, it's all about good gameplay for me and if frontier would redo the 1st elite again in wireframes etc , i would still buy it.
people are spoiled by graphics at the cost of good gameplay , i rather have a good game and story as ubergraphics and a boring game

You'll probably enjoy it then. I do and have much the same outlook, game wise, can't beat good game-play, its pretty involved as well, but does lack here and there, but its worth a look..

 

[Silanda]

My personal preference is that they commit to producing an offline mode, although admittedly it may take some time to release.

If they honestly cannot do that, they need to publicly apologize and offer refunds to both shop customers and Kickstarter backers unhappy about this. If they don't, and they just stay quiet, their reputation is going to suffer.