No Single Player Offline Mode then? [Part 2]

[Ecks Theory]

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.

A few years ago I was out for dinner with a girlfriend. She was a vegetarian, not because she didnt like the taste of meat or anthing like that, but because she felt it was cruel to animals. Now she ordered a bean burger and I ordered a cheese burger. After awhile our meal arrived and she was really hungery and took a big bite of her burger. Then she said "wow, this is the best bean burger Ive ever had!", then a strange look came over her face and she started to cry. Why? Because she had just bitten into a chicken burger.

Now at this point she had taken a bite and if the management had been anything like ED(or YOU) she would have been told tough, its still food. It doesnt matter that its not what you ordered or that eating it goes against your morals, beliefs or values. If you dont like it thats just too bad.

Of course the management wasnt like that and went out of their way to apologise. Not only offering a full refund but other forms of compensation. Sometimes things go wrong, or dont work out as planned, and thats just a fact of life. But when those things happen you dont just tell those negatively affected to "deal with it". Why? Because the only thing you have in business is your reputation. And once thats gone, youre done. You might not like it and ED might not like it, but at this point the gaming world is watching and everyone is shaking their heads at whats going on here.

The best thing for your game is to let us go. They more you drag this out the more its going to negatively affect the gamers that are happy about being on line only. Considering you posted "that", Im guessing youre already sick of hearing about refunds. Well, give us our money back and you wont hear about it anymore. We'll all drift of into the night, and you can be happy that your game wont be put in the same box as X rebirth.

 

[stamasd]

Well then, ask for a refund. It sounds like you would qualify.

From the Newsletter 50: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=6b99a1d038

I have. I received no reply from FD whatsoever.

 

[Deyn]

i still cant believe it. all that talk about offline?

lol for real?

I still can't believe people post like ^that! Simply try to imagine what you would have done if Frontier had announced the discontinuation of the online aspect, as the netcode can't meet their vision and rewriting it to work, and include IPv6 compatibility, they lack the ressources, so they had to make a "hard decision"?

Unless trolls like you stop poking a finger into the nerve of these people this discussion won't stop. The Media has more negative headlines to "promote" Elite ONLINE ("The biggest complaint in history now exceeding 10,000 posts, etc.) People may get angry enough to take legal actions, and with a bit of luck Frontier's funds are hit hard enough to stall or end the development of new features.
If you lack the little sense of empathy towards people affected by the that decision to drop offline, just do it out of egoistic selfishness. Always keep in mind all this affects the future of your Elite experience in some way...

BTW, any estimations how many people will now pass on Elite Online, rather than buy it straight away on 16th of Dec? I hope you get the finer point.

 

[mbpoblet]

Wow, thanks for removing my picture
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Moderator sense of humour = 0

Dammit, it was a good picture.

 

[Hermit]

At least someone appreciated it

 

[Alf]

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.

Thank you for this post, I've been very confused the last couple of days as to why there has been such a negative reaction to people wanting a refund for a product that will no longer be supplied.

It's been deeply unpleasant to see.

 

[Adept]

Thank you DhuAlan. I appreciate this calmer assessment.

I understand that online server-client model has a bad taste for you. I would hope that the game could still be enjoyable to you, but if you're sure it can't, I doubt I can convince you.

Here's what I fully agree with:
a) Frontier should have been more careful during the KS, and worded things explicitly so that on-line is the main product and off-line a bonus feature. It was a time of excitement (and the first KS for these people). They launched the KS before they had anything to show other than plans, and that was why it could easily have failed. It was an amateur job.

In their defence, I fully believe they though at the time that Off-line would be easy to implement, and didn't even think about any data-security and cliient/server-hacking problems.

b) The moment they realised they can't make it, they should have communicated it to us. Now, I personally think this is close to what actually happened. I'm in a game dev project myself (indie) and a collegue of mine (not a backer but interested) commented like this: "I'm sure several networking side programmers saw the problems coming half a year back. They will have raised the issue, but it takes time for the management to become convinced. There is a huge reluctance in management to drop features. Surely they can be included if we just work a liiitle bit harder. Then suddenly launch date is in sight, and all those problems still haven't been resolved, and that is when features have to be cut. The decision happens on the top, and reality takes a while to sink in"

c) The announcement was handled poorly. I think whomever is in charge of how to announce things in the newsletter is not really doing a very good job in general.

***

All that said, I think Frontier are not being nasty. They are not EA-level evil. They are being quite "British" about all this, and seem a little innocent about PR and community relations. Sometimes it's charming, some times frustrating. What I'm absolutely sure of is that they don't deserve the venom and accusations hurled at them, and that many over there have been shocked and hurt at what the recent reactions have been.

TL: DR once again. DhuAlan. I would personally hope that you stay. Play solo, and maybe you'll even occasionally feel like meeting some people. In general I find the playerbase quite cool so far.

Firstly I'm apologizing for my childish outburst of threatening terrorist like like behavior, in game and on the forums. You are quite right to highlight it as poor behavior.

A combination of bad mood, bad day and booze lead to a reduction of proper behavior.

With that said, it wasn't ever promoted as just a side feature, it had been confirmed as a can a will, and as of January of this year if not later had been confirmed by a Developer in these forums as being there.

You'll no doubt through the you can go online rebuttal again, my connectivity to the internet is not my issue with this.

The value a game that I'll be playing in the vast majority of time as single player that requires a constant internet connection to function is £0.00

This is a personal principal and valuation you will most likely not understand it, and at times I would have dipped online.

Its been tested before, Diablo 3, loved those games was hugely excited when part 3 was finally announced, it was going to have offline single player all new stuff. then they announced before taking money I may add that it would be online only. I still to this day do not and will not own Diablo 3 on PC, I did purchase it for xbox360 and its great.

FD were aware as alpha went to through to beta that offline was become highly unlikely, I think this was said in the Eurogamer article By Mr Braben.

If they'd had mentioned or posted in the forums I'd of seen that been disappointed and not spent a single penny. But they didn't they should have as it had been advertised promoted not just in kickstarter but in forums and interviews.

I checked before I made my purchase but based on the closing release date of q4, the 2nd beta approaching it is not unreasonable that a large feature such as this if going to be removed would have been indicated as such.

 

[Marc Alexander]

we "offliners"

Hi there,

You appear to be the spokesperson for the 'offliners', yet I consider that I can speak for myself. I would have played a bit of offline and I'm sad about that, but if I was that upset I could come on here and have a good rant about it for myself.

Thanks for offering though. I'd be intrigued to know how many peeps you consider you are the spokesperson for?

 

[Ecks Theory]

I'm not too worried about that. If Elite delivers a good net code and NPC / Faction interaction it will be a phenomenal game. There are always people who don't like a game, some of them will be vocal. In the balance, this will not really be a long term problem for Elite. The more content is added in the future, the less this will matter or even be remembered.

Perhaps you should be worried. Maybe not now but next time. How can you trust a company that cares so little about its customers? I get that you like the game, but thats no reason to be a door mat to the makers. Would you let your girlfriend/boyfriend walk all over you just because you really liked them? You know the type, youve seen them at least in tv shows and made fun of them saying "Id never let anyone treat me like that.". Well........

 

[Baragoon]

...sense of humour = 0

I think you of all people already know the answer to this. Seems authority never understands either of us. I think conversation has been deemed a "No Fun Allowed" zone, due to poostorm that it has brewed.

At least I know where you moved onto after leaving "that other place".

Edit: They have removed my avatar... wow... no fun allowed indeed

 

[hunvagy]

Thank you for this post, I've been very confused the last couple of days as to why there has been such a negative reaction to people wanting a refund for a product that will no longer be supplied.

It's been deeply unpleasant to see.

Yes it has been a pretty nasty read. I feel for the people whom the choice alienates. And I really hope that all the champions of online mode who took the time to counter the claims of people feeling bitter about the decision won't hesitate to do so again, if their online comrades start raging about instance sizes, no guilds, no global chat etc. It's only fair, if you berate people that want a feature that you tell those other people the same nice things you told here.

 

[mbpoblet]

Hi there,

You appear to be the spokesperson for the 'offliners', yet I consider that I can speak for myself. I would have played a bit of offline and I'm sad about that, but if I was that upset I could come on here and have a good rant about it for myself.

Thanks for offering though. I'd be intrigued to know how many peeps you consider you are the spokesperson for?

I represent only myself, if even.

Sorry if it came out any other way, it wasn't my intention; English is not my first language (nor my second) and sometimes I might not use the most appropriate expression for every specific case, leading to misunderstandings like this one.

I'll try to be more careful in the future.

 

[Polared]

If you go to the store and see 2 bottles of soda on the shelf, one is 2x the size and full (and never needs refilled), the other is empty to about 1/3 and both the same cost... Most will want the larger one.

yeah, but if the big one is 2x's the size because its full of other people's urine, me thinks i'll take the little one thanks!

your analogy assumes that both bottles contain exactly the same substance, and therefore is redundant to this discussion, as that is clearly not so in this case

 

[mbpoblet]

Edit: They have removed my avatar... wow... no fun allowed indeed

And I thought mine was as subtle as a brick to the teeth, yet it's still there...

 

[Wolframium]

the only thing you have in business is your reputation. And once thats gone, youre done. You might not like it and ED might not like it, but at this point the gaming world is watching and everyone is shaking their heads at whats going on here.

See, that's the thing: I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said, except that last part. It's a problem that I think is generally underestimated: not everyone is shaking their heads at FD. The gaming industry is unfortunately different from any other kind of business because there is always a sizeable portion of customers who will justify and defend gaming companies always no matter what.

If a fast food company made a mistake like that and told your girlfriend to "just eat it", not only would that end up in the news (as our problem did), but customers would most likely desert the place, a few heads would roll, and eventually someone high up would take one worried look at the negative customer influx figures pouring in, issue a formal apology and try to make it right, not because they actually cared about your girlfriend's hurt feelings, but because it would be the necessary move to save their business. Gaming companies on the other hand don't have to bother with any of that because, unfortunately, they know that they can always count on hordes of fanatical supporters.

 

[Ericlas]

...but at this point the gaming world is watching and everyone is shaking their heads at whats going on here...

Don't you go a little far with that?
We all are entangled in this issue and therefore way more sensitive to those news.
But others?
Did your hear about the "Assassins Creed - Unity" outcry?
Did your hear about the "Missing Editor in Far Cry 4" outcry?
Just to name a few, happened this and last week.

Not everyone is interested in this game or any other FD has to offer. "It is just one other game from one other game company, why should I care?"
Some even say, "Hey it's not even released, let's first see what tests will say."
Stuff like that happens everywhere, everytime, if it is games, cars, household products, you name it.
The internet community and media reporting became so oversensational and people got so used to it, that it just became normal to many and kind of a constantly flowing backgroundnoise.

 

[Toumal]

yeah, but if the big one is 2x's the size because its full of other people's urine, me thinks i'll take the little one thanks!

your analogy assumes that both bottles contain exactly the same substance, and therefore is redundant to this discussion, as that is clearly not so in this case

The problem is that even if someone were to come up with the perfect clever analogy, it still would not change your Erdős number

 

[Hermit]

At least I know where you moved onto after leaving "that other place".

Do you mean the Star Citizen thread?
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The reason I don't post on there now is all down to the removal of offline for Elite. I can't exactly criticise that game for it's failings now that this has happened. All a Star Citizen fanboy has to reply with is "well, what about Elite offline then?" and it'll kill the argument dead. So I don't bother now

 

[Incident]

First, I'm not bothered about no offline game, to me ED would have just been a "reboot" of the older games if it had been offline only (yes I did play the other 3). But it that what you wanted a reboot?

Second - because of the first - I don't understand why people want to attack this game/DB/FD because of this, people are hating on this game so much now I feel that the other players (not bothered about this change) may lose out, ie the "offliners" (no offence) will spread their disappointment - shall we say - to anyone and everyone anyway they can.

So this change, is more of a technical issue that people wanted offline - can't access internet all the time, that the promiss was broke when it was laid it out in the Kickstarter or you don't like online games?

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

there is always a sizeable portion of customers who will justify and defend gaming companies always no matter what.

The counter argument to that is there is always a sizeable portion of people who will try and cause trouble for trouble sake as well. And generally those people tend to be heard more then the defenders.