No Single Player Offline Mode then? [Part 2]

[m000]

If you must know, my father was a lawyer and my brother dyslexic. Between the two of them I found a great interest in the finesses of the English language and have gained more than a basic ability to read and digest legalese. From an ethical and moral position I completely agree that FD should have given goodwill gesture refunds (and even stated so in one of my first posts on the matter https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&p=1017153&viewfull=1#post1017153) BUT that also means that they have to look at it from a business viewpoint.

I'm just tired of people trying to weasel their way out of not understanding what Kickstarter was/is before they decided to pledge exorbitant amounts of money to someone through it.

Caveat emptor.

Only in this case, it is FD weaseling their way out using KS.

People do understand the risks coming with KS. Yet, in this case it is apparent that:

a) Offline was an important part of the project. The KS campaign was stagnant for several weeks. It was eventually successful because FD added offline to the list, which coninced people to pledge.
b) FD didn't even try to implement offline. They dropped it rather light-heartedly without considering (a), and invested all their funding in the oposite direction.

I don't know if the updates to KS rules are retroactive, but it is clear that they address situations similar to this one (emphasis mine):

The creator has a few options to remedy the situation, the entry states. The creator has met the obligation – in the eyes of Kickstarter – if:

- An updated is posted that explains what work has been completed, how funds were used, and what is stopping the project from being completed
- The creator works diligently to bring the project to the “best possibly conclusion” in a timeframe that’s communicated to the backers
- The creator shows funds were properly used and made every possible effort to complete the project
- The creator has been honest and hasn’t misrepresented any information
- The creator returns any funding to those who haven’t received all of their rewards, or clearly explain how these funds will help finish the project in an alternate form.

Source: http://www.screwattack.com/news/kic...-addresses-creators-who-fail-deliver-projects

So even if FD eventually delivered an alternate form of ED, I seriously doubt they were honest along the way.

 

[Wolframium]

[redacted]

Oh, I will go away, as soon as I get my money back. Not a second sooner. I am about as sick of this as everyone else.

[redacted]

 

[m000]

Wow, that makes so little sense I actually felt sad reading it.

It's like saying that getting a computer to tell you if it' going to rain or not in your city is super easy because it's a yes/no answer. The bandwidth it takes to get you the answer is NOT a way to find out how much work goes on in the server end.

Ask google how much work it takes to get you a single page of results.

Man, did you really think nobody was going to call you out on that drivel?

Bad analogy. Prediction of weather needs CPU power if you want to predict e.g. tomorrow.
I can tell if it will rain within the next 10' by looking outside the window, while typing this on my ZX Spectrum.

 

[-c-s-]

I've played plenty of games where they changed things after purchase making it not the game i bought. Can i claim refunds on all those as well?!

Again. Elite : Dangerous would not exist right now if the kickstarter backers had not pushed it past the goal after being promised that offline play would be supported. For almost 2 years, Frontier said not a single word to any of their backers about problems or delays with delivering on their promise of offline support. Now, suddenly, the product that those backers purchased isn't the one about to delivered because "it was a creative decision".

"Ok, I'd like my money back, please." we say. "Sorry, you downloaded the beta, shuffle off", is the reply.

Um, yeah...some of us have every right to be livid.

NOTE: if you take issue with the word "promise", and think "propose" is more proper, I would point you to the fact that many closed a business transaction after what you say was a "proposal", thereby it becomes a little more than just an elective.

 

[Manfred]

Given Braben's own claim that the game is only using 10 kb/s of bandwidth in online solo, it sounds like their really isn't terribly much going on on the server-side of things other than grouping players together. In fact his statements amount that really just reiterate how needless an always online requirement really is.

Can anyone verify this by actually testing this? I don't trust anything David says anymore...

 

[Jonbe54]

Can anyone verify this by actually testing this? I don't trust anything David says anymore...

And that is the saddest comment of all . . David has been a giant and a leader, now a growing portion of the gaming community will see him as a shyster.

 

[m000]

I really do not see how anyone thought that an offline version of this would be possible. Like the majority of massive content online based server games there is no offline version.

Can you tell me of a game with "massive content online" which is delivers a playable experience over a 10kbps stream?

The fact that ED is claimed to consume only 10kbps strongly hints that all the content is on the client side. What is being transmitted is only seeds to generate what you see and updates to in-game values (positions, market prices etc).

 

[-c-s-]

Wow, that makes so little sense I actually felt sad reading it.

It's like saying that getting a computer to tell you if it' going to rain or not in your city is super easy because it's a yes/no answer. The bandwidth it takes to get you the answer is NOT a way to find out how much work goes on in the server end.

Ask google how much work it takes to get you a single page of results.

Man, did you really think nobody was going to call you out on that drivel?

If you don't understand what I wrote, say so. You don't have to be mean and call it drivel. Perhaps there are others that understood.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Can you tell me of a game with "massive content online" which is delivers a playable experience over a 10kbps stream?

The fact that ED is claimed to consume only 10kbps strongly hints that all the content is on the client side. What is being transmitted is only seeds to generate what you see and updates to in-game values (positions, market prices etc).

Oh look, there is somebody that gets it.

 

[mbpoblet]

I really do not see how anyone thought that an offline version of this would be possible.

Frankly, an offline version would be much simpler to do.

 

[Grimster]

I've no idea why there's any 'sides' here at all.

All players of this game are poorer because choices and/or features have been removed. Everyone should be mourning the loss of a game feature, and the loss of those Elite fans this decision alienates.

 

[Krait_79]

With regards to this whole debate the only people i feel sorry for are those with no or next to no internet who pre ordered the game expecting off line play. Whilst they will rightfully get refunds it is umfortunate they will miss out.

As for those who have been playing the beta and are complaining that they only want offline play or won't be able to play whilst Camel trekking across the Gobi desert or whatever i have no sympathy. You just sound like a load of spoilt brats. Just be thankful you are still able to play and just get over the fact that the only real impact on your gaming experience is that you may have to find another home in a game with 400 billion homes to avoid the effects of other players.

They changed a feature, deal with it because it will continue to happen. I remember pre ordering battlefield 3 paid extra for premium and got all the maps. Then they made rent a server and all of a sudden all you could play was 500% metro or you had servers with badmins who kicked you for being good, using a certain gun etc. To be able to carry on playing all those maps i wanted to and had paid for i would have had to have paid for my own server. So did i cry to the developers for a refund for this drastic alteration that had a negative impact on my game? No because i could still play the game.

 

[mbpoblet]

The recent disclosure that only 10kbps is required for "solo" play is actually really strong evidence that it is simpler than you might think.


The economy data is just simple store and forward keyed by node. There are no calculations on the data retrieval side of the transaction. There are relatively minor calculations that happen on the write side of the transaction.

The only code that takes non-zero time happens at the "commit" of a transaction; it is the code that updates the demand stats by visiting the dependency graph of the commodity. The results get written to a distributed cache, ready to be read.

Reads happen considerably more often than writes. This amount of data is peanuts and is what I describe as the bitstream of the logical event stream.


The transform calculations are transforms that are known ahead of time and they take negligible CPU time. This could easily be done client side to support the offline mode.

The only reason it isn't done client-side is because they want to force every player to share the same global event stream so they can't trust the calculations done on the client. This is why they say that "servers are required".


But there is actually a little more nuance. When they said "It is a creative decision" to justify removing offline support, they are telling us that they include modifications to those transform calculations when visiting the dependency graph of non-commodity events in the event stream.

Again, nothing precludes this from being done offline. There is nothing special about the code running on the servers that would prevent it running locally; it isn't special.

Once again, the only reason that it isn't client side is because Frontier is dead set on forcing everyone to share a single global event stream. The modifications to the transforms have to reside where the calculations run, so therefore, they now have to be on the server.


It should be clear now, that the hurdle that "killed" offline support was Frontier's mandate that all players must share the global event stream; that there must be only one unique Elite universe.

I would argue that by that single design decision, they stopped being an open sandbox and become just a large theme park.

The 10kbps thing says it all.

This is SimCity all over again.

Let's hope we can reverse engineer private servers soon.

 

[Zuikaku]

I really do not see how anyone thought that an offline version of this would be possible. Like the majority of massive content online based server games there is no offline version.
.

So, Frontier was also not possible. It was just a dream...

And just to remind you, in their last newsletter DB clearly stated that it is possible. They just didn't wanted to do that. That it was purely design decision. After 2 years of announcing offline mode and misleading part of community, they decided they do not want to do that. Not that they can not do that - thay do no want to.

 

[Erna Jedermann]

The 10kbps thing says it all.

This is SimCity all over again.

Let's hope we can reverse engineer private servers soon.

You know that there is a big wish about more Social Features chats and so on......then it will be more than 10kbps.
And the Lag grows......"Wanna buy credit follow link to www.Bot&Chinafarmers.xy .... transaction in minutes...."

 

[mbpoblet]

Can anyone verify this by actually testing this? I don't trust anything David says anymore...

Not till beta 3.9 (or gamma, maybe) comes out, I assume.

 

[Zuikaku]

They changed a feature, deal with it because it will continue to happen.

It is not a feature. It is what the changes the way game can be played and the nature of game itself!

 

[Adept]

I wanted to comment in the previous thread. No quote now (I'm on an iPad), but this is addressed to several people here:
------------------
I keep reading how people "need" the off-line mode because they have limited time to play and can't, and don't want to "compete with kids who play 24/7". I keep hearing about how you have to play a ton to "compete" in the MMO, or all the good trades will be gone and the resoures mined out.

This seems like a completely misplaced worry. I've never stopped being a gamer (hard to use the term now, thanks a bunch GG), but I am 40 years old and quite busy. I'm lucky if I'll get to play an hour or two every week, and mostly I plan to play at a very relaxed pace when I can arrange time to get together with my friends.

The game will have an unimaginably huge, living galaxy. It's not a small sandbox which will get strip-mined and exploited. Frontier seem to have put some hilariously fast resource depletion rates in the Beta test, but honestl I don't expect us to be able to deplete a rich belt at all after launch.

Think about it. There are "extraction economies" in systems. Whole stations with populations of tens of thousands (at the very least) are built in a mineral rich system, and they are exploited for decades, at the very least. Haulers and Cobras, even Asps pulling tens of tons of ore each from a belt are barely making a scratch. Think about the real world. There is a famous city in Sweden, which is being moved since the 100 year old iron mine is expanding under it, deep under ground. It's been heavily exploited, and it's expected to be in use for another century at least.

***

TL: DR verion. You don't need an off-line version because you can't play much and "can't compete" with people who have lots of time to play. We are not in competition anyway, and the universe is not going to be traded and mined out. You can quite happily play at your own pace, and the effects of the other players will just blend in with the actions of the NPCs.

 

[piotrr]

Did you download and play it? Or just download it? If you played it then it can't be *entirely* worthless. But having said that I still don't agree with their refund policy.

How long do I have to play before "testing out" becomes "playing" and then "playing" becomes "not entirely worthless".

Not that I think anyone actually said it was entirely worthless just because it doesn't contain that feature I had looked forward to the most. It's not COMPLETELY worthless, it's just not the product I wanted to support.

 

[mbpoblet]

I've no idea why there's any 'sides' here at all.

All players of this game are poorer because choices and/or features have been removed. Everyone should be mourning the loss of a game feature, and the loss of those Elite fans this decision alienates.

Exactly.

I despise massive multiplayer with all my liver (it's a bug, not a feature), but if it had been scrapped instead of offline (under the same circumstances) I'd definitely not be defending Frontier.

And I think I can say the same for most, if not all "offliners".

 

[Xenonclouds]

Can you tell me of a game with "massive content online" which is delivers a playable experience over a 10kbps stream?

The fact that ED is claimed to consume only 10kbps strongly hints that all the content is on the client side. What is being transmitted is only seeds to generate what you see and updates to in-game values (positions, market prices etc).

I must be playing a different game at the moment as content is a rare commodity. When the 'bubble' bursts and opens up, then what?

Oh......I forgot about the huge content that has been promised on release (or will require another transaction). Should be nothing to worry about then. ;-)