Dear Frontier Development, can we have an offline mode?

[ToastSky]

Now before anyone start bashing my head in for bringing this up, I have read most of their reasoning for this game being Always Online. I have to say they have a valid point, BUT despite the valid points I believe they shouldn't take away the option, so I have a suggestion: built in an offline mode that's completely cut off from Free Play or Solo Play. That means anything happens in this Offline Mode stays on it, it doesn't carry over to Free Play or Solo Play.
This suggestion is mainly for two kinds of people:
1. People who does not have stable internet connection or are on a data plan.
2. People who just wants to mess around with the game without sinking hours upon hours in it.(Since editing save files and many other values is now possible.)

Now I acknowledge that these 2 types are by no means the majority, but I believe that many of us would still really appreciate this change, and it wouldn't effect the majorities negatively.

Edited: After a lot of helpful replies, I come to the conclusion that people truly believe offline mode is unnecessary,but as I said, it's more for the very tiny minorities and I understand if they decide to keep it Always Online.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I doubt it's even technically possible. There are 400 billion starsystems in this game. FD have at some point said that the exploration database is the largest chunk of data on the servers, and we've explored only a tiny fraction yet. That will probably not fit any local computer.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I doubt it's even technically possible. There are 400 billion starsystems in this game. FD have at some point said that the exploration database is the largest chunk of data on the servers, and we've explored only a tiny fraction yet. That will probably not fit any local computer.

think so too.
also, im sorry to say that, but the majority of games nowdays need a permanent internet connection. let it be because of multiplayer, database, drm or whatever...so if your internet is garbage, then you will have problems everywhere.
even consoles need a connection to the internet now.
offline games are simply dead...or about to die

 

[Susimetsa]

I don't mind the internet connection, but I'd very much want to see a proper pause function for the solo play mode. I don't have the patience to log off and then wait to log back in every time I need to switch to another programme for a few moments, or go to see something elsewhere in the house, or respond to a question by my wife or daughter or...

 

[ToastSky]

I doubt it's even technically possible. There are 400 billion starsystems in this game. FD have at some point said that the exploration database is the largest chunk of data on the servers, and we've explored only a tiny fraction yet. That will probably not fit any local computer.

That won't really be a problem if the offline mode is cut off from everything else, since that means it only need to load systems that are in the immediate vicinity, exploration would just be another function disabled.
Though I have to be honest I didn't consider the size of the files containing the systems, thanks for pointing that out to me.

 

[Janichsan]

Now before anyone start bashing my head in for bringing this up,… *snip*

I don't assume you have been around for the great Offline Mode Debacle last year. There never will be an offline mode, since if you simply axe the online functionality, the game would be completely and utterly dead and static. There would be no economics, no missions, no political background simulation. The only thing you could do is fly around and shoot the occasional randomly generated NPC.

 

[The Big One]

The devs have repeatedly said, that it's doable, but they have no interest doing it in the near future. They also said we get offline mode once they are not able to support the servers financially. But I wouldn't count on it, since then the company might be financially broken and unable to fulfill this promise. The offline mode thread had a few hundred pages, where all possible and impossible reasons were discussed and I think all about offline-gate was already said.

For me, as an original backer was cutting out the offline mode, like a stab in my back. The originally promised feature was deleted and this decision defended by some technobabble. So yeah, it's possible for them to do it, but they won't.

 

[Janichsan]

They also said we get offline mode once they are not able to support the servers financially. But I wouldn't count on it, since then the company might be financially broken and unable to fulfill this promise.

Well, specifically, they said they would release the server software, so you could run your own local server. That takes a significantly lesser effort than re-writing the client to run completely offline.

 

[Arioch]

I doubt it's even technically possible. There are 400 billion starsystems in this game. FD have at some point said that the exploration database is the largest chunk of data on the servers, and we've explored only a tiny fraction yet. That will probably not fit any local computer.

The exploration database in an offline mode would only have to store the systems the player had visited. The 400 billion-stars galaxy is a bit smoke and mirrors really, it's all procedural generation. Frontier: Elite 2 fit an entire galaxy on a single 3.5" floppy disk (admittedly it was only around 513,982,470 star systems, but it did have planetary landings included).

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The exploration database in an offline mode would only have to store the systems the player had visited. The 400 billion-stars galaxy is a bit smoke and mirrors really, it's all procedural generation. Frontier: Elite 2 fit an entire galaxy on a single 3.5" floppy disk (admittedly it was only around 513,982,470 star systems, but it did have planetary landings included).

In Elite 2 you had a hardcap of what you could actually explore though. After roughly a year game time the drive needs maintenance or breaks down. So you were limited to where you could go to and return from in that timeframe.

 

[Arioch]

In Elite 2 you had a hardcap of what you could actually explore though. After roughly a year game time the drive needs maintenance or breaks down. So you were limited to where you could go to and return from in that timeframe.

I'm not sure what point you are making? My point was that with procedural generation the galaxy (or rather the potential galaxy) is already on your computer, as with FE2 on the floppy disk. Every one of those systems can be visited.
In the hypothetical offline exploration database only exploration data generated by the player would need to be stored, which seems to be the "discovered by" tag in the present game. As it's only a few lines of text it's not going to be using much space, a few kB at most if we were going to add in any other changes that the player caused, about the size of a common email. If we generated, say, 10kB of data per system and visited 100 new systems per day for a full year, we'd still only have generated 365MB for our exploration database. If that'd been the case for FE2 and you'd played every day since release, then your save file would be roughly 8.4GB by now and show a massive dedication to exploration (though with the slightly depressing prospect of roughly 513,142,000 systems still to go!).

 

[The Big One]

If that'd been the case for FE2 and you'd played every day since release, then your save file would be roughly 8.4GB by now and show a massive dedication to exploration (though with the slightly depressing prospect of roughly 513,142,000 systems still to go!).

I agree with this and as said by the devs it's doable to make an offline mode right now. Our computers have no problem with raw power and storage capacity. Heck, I would even take a static universe, without PP, just good old Elite in new graphics.

What I absolutely loathe, is the constant connection to their servers. I hate the P2P architecture of the game. Even in solo, there is a lot of data sent to servers, which makes no sense to me. All this makes the game to lag, which would be eliminated in offline. I have a top pc , exceeding the requirements by far and yet ED is lagging, which makes me sad and leads to me not playing as much as I used to.

 

[Toumal]

I think it's technically possible to do, though it would definitely take some extra time. And even though I am not at all angry about them not supporting offline play as of now, I do support the motion to add this at some point.

 

[dementia]

I'd be happy with an offline mode but with a LAN server option too so all the PCs in your home network could play together. A sort of Open-lite sort of thing but without the need for an internet connection.

 

[Zacpod]

I'd be happy if the game didn't drop me to the title screen in solo mode because the matchmaking server dropped my connection.
Though the offline mode that was promised in Kickstarter would be preferable.
I don't want to play with all the griefers and goons in Open. I just want to play with NPCs, like the original. If the game needs to occasionally update the economy online, that's fine, but DONT DROP ME TO MAIN MENU IF THE GAME CANT CONNECT!
I don't care if my net drops, or if your servers suck, or if some cable between North America and the UK gets saturated - dropping me to main menu in a single player game is a huge slap in the face, and is why I boycott companies like Ubisoft.

 

[Lianachan]

Single player offline mode please. It's why I backed ED on day one of the Kickstarter. The ol' bait and switch really annoyed me, but I stuck with it to give solo mode a chance due to good will for FD. They've now spent all of that good will, and all of the money I've given them, developing a game that I wouldn't have gone near at all if it was initially described as the way it is now (and I'm including all known upcoming development in that).

 

[Ian Phillips]

Ooops.

Necro.

Closing.