No Single Player offline Mode then?

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Can't agree with that. Are you trying to say that my PC is slower at passing data around than my broadband connection?

Communication is not the concern, it is the calculation. The galaxy map in game was generated from using known star formation theories and simulated for a few 'virtual' billion years.
 
It's a good thing that your idea of defamation doesn't match up to the legal definition either ;) Just because you say something is the case doesn't make it so, no matter how often you repeat it.

That's the point, I wasn't suggesting they had a case at all

"I would say good thing a few people on a forum don't really add up to much"

And certainly nothing matches "Requirement of serious harm" and certainly I can appreciate a lot of it falling under "Honest Opinion".

But the language and tone on these forums that implies it does no one any good.
 
To put this in a different light...you freely gave your money to a development company for vaporware. You have no rights to anything EXCEPT what they physically give you the day you give them your money. Otherwise anything they pitch is negotiable, at their discretion. You have no say in the process nor do you have any say in the final product. You have rights when you buy stock (a better way to support a company, IMHO), not when you Kickstart. In the eternal words of any consumer protection agency, 'Caveat Emptor'.

I did buy a Physical DRM free edition,though. They won't deliver that. In those cases kickstarter says the creator is legally bound to refund.
 
Ok Joe, point made. But would you have the same attitude if multiplayer had been pulled for the sake of the offline game?

And as has been mentioned previously, there will be other backers who are not yet aware of this issue. Brace yourself...........

Of course I would. Whether I am affected or not does not effect the validity of what I said.
 
Exactly!
To be honest, 400 billions system is spectacular number, but let's be straight here - nobodz will ever manage to explore even a 1% of that!
I must say that I would'd be happy with say... 10.000 systems! Boring too much - put procedural generatin with every new start, and you will have 10.000 different system every time! Fun enough.

And I must say this - I have feeling that they shoul'd stat from offline mode first, and then put MMO features above it - not the other way arround!
 
- last figure from FDEV was app. 150k backers playing ed beta
- expect moderate sales after launch to be sufficient to sustain ed for the short to medium term

150,000 People.

1. At a guess that means they have about $15million revenue so far. I think they can afford to keep us entertained for a few months

2. From one day viewing this forum at a guess, it means that 149,950 are either happy with not having off line or have already left us to get on with it.

4. Is there a silent majority?
 
Oh laugh out loud. What company in the history of companies has ever intended to lose money, go out of business or, metaphorically speaking, "take the servers down?"

Go ask Flagship Studios if they ever intended to take their servers down. Oh wait, you can't, because they folded within a year of Hellgate London's release. I'm sure people on this forum can find even more contemporary examples.

Well managed companies *always* have plans for everything they can, including "What if we fail?".
 
Because it was an apology, and an explanation from someone who actually knows what he's talking about... no offence. ;)

Except it wasn't. Reading is fun.

I shall quote him verbatim.

"I am sorry that people are so upset about it, but it was the right decision."

He's not apologising for taking out offline mode, he's only apologising for the fact we're upset about it. Nothing more. He's standing by, and defending the removal of offline mode, as evidenced by the fact that FDEV are denying refunds.
 
The problem here is the fact that you can play solo, but not single-player (and offline). In this case, solo indeed does equal both ONLINE and MULTIPLAYER. You see, when you play single-player (and offline) you are the "master of your own universe". In case of ED's solo play you indeed directly interact with the game universe only by yourself. HOWEVER, the universe is indirectly and constantly changed and affected by living people that you do not even see or interact with. Even worse, the universe changes even when you don't play the game. How is that equal to situation in which you play a single-player game, save it, and return to it 2 months after - continuing exactly at the state the universe was when you saved the game? It is NOT equal in any case or form. This IS MULTIPLAYER.

I will allow that it might be hard for some people to grasp that someone in this day and age would like to play and offline single-player game not affected by a multitude of people. However, that's exactly how previous Elite games worked, and that's something that quite a lot of people who backed ED (people who played the original Elite series as kids) wanted as an OPTION (in addition to ONLINE and MULTIPLAYER). But, what we got instead is some sort of a hybrid - not enough multiplayer as to be able to call it a fully fledged MMO (or even multiplayer currently as that option does not work), and yet not enough solo (and offline) as to be able to call it a single-player game. It is indeed a really weird two-headed hydra that cannot decide whether it wants to be a serpent in Greek mythology or a simple freshwater animal belonging to the phylum Cnidaria.

I understand that ED was developed by a new generation of developers. Some (all?) of them have even never played any of the old Elite games to date, as they themselves stated in several promotional videos. Yeah, yeah, the world has moved forward and it's prerogative to be in touch with cool 21st century buzzword-laden technologies, where "everything is in cloud" and is web-based. This does not mean that the majority of us (the "old skoolers") do not understand this need and that we are not open to new technologies. For Riedquat's sake it was us who played Elite on BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum 48 and Commodore 64 being only 6 or 7 years of age. We do "dig" technology. We (or I, not to speak for others) use Windows 8.1. I use Nexus smartphone and have tested a boatload of custom ROMs to date on it (including Jolla). I am using Google services and have a partner account with them. I do dig "new" and support it wherever I can because I am - an IT geek.

However, what is being forgotten here is the original intent and the promise. We were brought here based on our childhood memories of Elite. Just go and see some of the first reactions/comments on Kickstarter. They are from adults but they look like they were written by happy little kids that were handed a bar of the world's sweetest chocolate. David Braben was himself emotional about it. He inspired all of us. Called to the people that played his game while he was still a student. His videos were touching and sincere. He told us that he is making another Elite game and wants us to help in creating it. We flocked to the cause, driven precisely by this emotion. In part by the promise that the game will have a mode in which we will be able to relive our childhood experience with Elite - an offline "oasis for 'old skool' players". We were driven to it by the promise that we will be able to re-create the same atmosphere we found mesmerizing in previous Elite games - but only better. We would again be "masters of our exquisite Elite universe we play in". We would play it, read it, sip it, enjoy it, at our own pace, like a good book which you read in a quiet room, wrapped in a blanket in your favorite armchair, listening to the gentle crackling of the fireplace. Then set it down and continue the next day at the exact position we left it the previous evening. For the times we want to be adventurous we would hop in in the multiplayer mode and play the game with other people - such as when you go to a theater or play a small league football match. The important part of this is the fact that in the first case we definitely do not want the game to basically "play itself" while we are away from our computers. This is why we never even asked that the offline mode be as dynamic or as "rich" (oh how I like this buzzword!) as the online mode. It does not matter for single play - we played previous Elite games like that and liked them, despite (or even because of) their "static" and "algorithmic" nature.


In the end (and not to turn this post into a too large wall of text) I just want to say that I feel genuinely sorry for Mr. Braben. ED was supposed to be the pinnacle of his career (even life?). Looking back at everything that transpired since this change was stealthily announced in the newsletter, I can only postulate that ED has been probably irreversibly tarnished with this debacle. I still cannot believe they did not anticipate the kind of reaction they will get. I find it even more unbelievable how bad they handled it all.


The only thing we (specifically I) have left to do now is to do what I, now a simple consumer (since I do not feel as 'backer' anymore), is to "vote with my proverbial wallet" - i.e. ask for a refund. It is not an easy job, as I really believed and wanted to relive my past memories with this game. And I know I am not speaking just for myself. I have to do it, however symbolic it might be. Because, if left unpunished, such behavior and total disregard for loyal followers and evangelists will again be seen tomorrow - from some other development studio - which will build another community around stuff of dreams, our emotions and memories, and shatter them again.

Farewell.

I thought about snipping this down a little but it is too good not to post twice.
I, fortunately, was burned by pre-ordering a game last year that promised much and delivered little so I resisted putting any cash at risk here but your post exactly echo'd my own feeling of disappointment.
I was looking forward to playing the original Elite that I spent too long playing whilst hunched over a hot BBC B back in the day, only with better graphics and richer visual effects.
Instead I am now offered a chance to join in a free for all, probably dog eat dog universe or choose to go solo in that same universe that constantly evolves even when I have not played for a week.
It would be like going to bed and waking the next morning to find someone had knocked down the neighbourhood and built flats while you slept.
I think I will let the youngsters have this one and accept that probably my favoured type of game is no longer likely to be ever produced again.
 
I did buy a Physical DRM free edition,though. They won't deliver that. In those cases kickstarter says the creator is legally bound to refund.

How does KS define DRM ?

Physical version isn't a problem and there's no DRM in the game apart from requirement to login to the game server so I'm curious on what they'll do with that ... also since you bought a physical version you're much more likely to actually get refunded than any of the people who bought the digital edition from FD store :)
 

Pfft. Whatever. It was a good answer. I'm not going to abuse the guy no matter what. He's the creator of Elite.

I still don't like that he dropped offline, and I'm not happy about the reasons for it because they're entirely self-inflicted. The situation, and the way it was handled, stinks.

But promising to release the servers if they ever needed to shut them down, and phrasing an apology that was less like the curt "Go away - I'm busy!" that Michael typically produces deserves a modicum of respect & thanks.
 
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Except it wasn't. Reading is fun.

I shall quote him verbatim.

"I am sorry that people are so upset about it, but it was the right decision."

He's not apologising for taking out offline mode, he's only apologising for the fact we're upset about it. Nothing more. He's standing by, and defending the removal of offline mode, as evidenced by the fact that FDEV are denying refunds.

I wanted to rep, because you said it better than I did. But I can't rep until I rep some other people. I hope some repworthy stuff comes around and then I'll rep a more recent post by you. You'll know then that it is actually intended for this post. Sorry, dude.
 
Except it wasn't. Reading is fun.

I shall quote him verbatim.

"I am sorry that people are so upset about it, but it was the right decision."

He's not apologising for taking out offline mode, he's only apologising for the fact we're upset about it. Nothing more. He's standing by, and defending the removal of offline mode, as evidenced by the fact that FDEV are denying refunds.

Oh come on. Refunds are being looked at on a case by case basis so of course some are going to be denied. Your point is not valid.
 
Not really, size is quite irrelevant in procedural generation... number of players should be the real limiting factor (and thus irrelevant for offline mode).

Well, it might if you intended to run the galaxy at minimal abstraction across the entirety of it (as apparently FDEV intend), but for a singleplayer experience that would be utter overkill, as we've already discussed and as I've already elucidated, that's entirely unnecessary and there's plenty of ways to optimise the computational load to bring it down to more sane requirements and even make it tolerable to say 16-32 people being within a local copy on a server.
 
As if they would have anything to say at all after they declare bankrupt because then the manager who take over try to sell the online game together with all customer data and not make the data public how we could set up our own server.

Sorry but I don't get what you want to say If someone will take over the company and want to make profit than there will be servers still If not and FD want to have a way to pass over the server code to the public for that case they will able to do it. There are lots of other MMO games with unofficial private servers although they are still have official ones and yes they are pirated but I won't care playing on an unofficial pirated server if there won't be any other way. So as I see there will be always an option to play Elite so this estimation of "2 year life cycle" is pretty ridicilous to me.
 
Communication is not the concern, it is the calculation. The galaxy map in game was generated from using known star formation theories and simulated for a few 'virtual' billion years.

Would you care to go in detail, this does not answer anything.
 
Pfft. Whatever. It was a good answer. I'm not going to abuse the guy no matter what. He's the creator of Elite.

I still don't like that he dropped offline, and I'm not happy about the reasons for it because they're entirely self-inflicted. The situation, and the way it was handled, stinks.

But promising to release the servers if they ever needed to shut them down, and phrasing an apology that was less like the curt "Go away - I'm busy!" that Michael typically produces deserves a modicum of respect & thanks.

Agreed, I merely wanted to inject some humor. I can appreciate that it fell flat though.
 
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