It's time for an offline version.

[Agony_Aunt]

The difference is with a public group of modders, you have potentially more available coders who are not constrained by financial decisions and possibly more importantly, modders play the game extensively, with no ther interest than to make it better for players.

True, although i'd modify that last statement to say "make it better for them".

Modders don't always change things for the better, depending on what you want from a game. Its just often that if there is a big modding community you can usually cherry pick the things you like.

I used to do a lot of modding for NWN2 (it was designed to be moddable though). Some people liked my stuff. Some people didn't.

Sometimes people on the forums used to tell me my ideas were rubbish.

You basically get treated the like a developer, except nobody is paying you to take the abuse.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Frontier's biggest issue as a dev studio is an utter lack of transparency. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Star Citizen's development where there's regular and consistent "behind the scenes" looks at what general employees are doing,

LOL, comparing to CIG's smoke and mirrors is not a good idea.

CIG show a lot of what they say they are doing, have done so for many years, and delivered on very little of what they have shown.

Frankly speaking, if that is the yardstick, then i'd rather have less transparancy. Better devs say nothing than constantly mislead and lie to backers (although FD haven't been particularly good in this department either - Horizons vs Odyssey performance i'm looking at you).

Also, just in case you haven't noticed, but FD do weekly streams with CMs where they talk about the state of the game.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Frontier's biggest issue as a dev studio is an utter lack of transparency. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Star Citizen's development where there's regular and consistent "behind the scenes" looks at what general employees are doing, showing off the development tools, and having programmers actually talk about the various challenges they face and how they approach them, as well as regularly interact with their community...but the sheer amount of radio silence that Frontier displays is just irritating.

FD usually says nothing. CIG goes on and on about stuff that ultimately rarely makes it in the game and is then just forgotten and replaced by the next buzzword. Both are pretty bad, but if I had to chose I'd prefer no communication over the horsecrap-bingo of CIG. A better example would be Asebo or Paradox Interactive, IMHO. They give info that is actually true, which is a nice bonus.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Won't happen.

 

[Kethriss]

FD usually says nothing. CIG goes on and on about stuff that ultimately rarely makes it in the game and is then just forgotten and replaced by the next buzzword. Both are pretty bad, but if I had to chose I'd prefer no communication over the horsecrap-bingo of CIG. A better example would be Asebo or Paradox Interactive, IMHO. They give info that is actually true, which is a nice bonus.

Except that virtually everything with the exception of the more recent stuff that's still being developed that they've talked about has made it in to the game. I'd highly recommend not just subscribing to memes about something and actually taking the time to look at what has actually been developed and released for a product before you try to make claims like that.

You know, like how Frontier should have made people aware that their recent product is a atrocious piece of garbage that is defective in nearly every way instead of trying to sell it under false pretenses.

Actually taking the time to make sure you aren't straight up lying to people is always a good thing.

 

[Salonica]

Frontier's biggest issue as a dev studio is an utter lack of transparency. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Star Citizen's development where there's regular and consistent "behind the scenes" looks at what general employees are doing, showing off the development tools, and having programmers actually talk about the various challenges they face and how they approach them, as well as regularly interact with their community...but the sheer amount of radio silence that Frontier displays is just irritating.

Months and months and months go by without so much as a peep from Frontier about what they're working on or what issues they might be facing, no actual insight in to what the plan is for the game, just silence, curated Q&A's on the live streams that feel awkward as hell and don't actually reveal anything people don't already know. And then suddenly an update comes out, it's broken as hell, then they break radio silence only for as long as they feel the need to do damage control. This has been a consistent pattern since before Horizons launched, and Odyssey is just the most egregious example.

Braben saying that is insulting to be honest. If he actually gave a damn enough to genuinely feel that way, then Frontier would have been making us aware of issues and giving us insights in to what they're working on and what their plans are a long, long time ago.

It's not just about transparency, it also about, everything is vague. Fact is no-one knew exactly what they were buying with EDO. The deliverable was never laid down or communicated. Things were hidden behind 'some things are not being shown in beta'.. so what exactly extra was delivered? It's like the whole 'there's lots of things hidden out there to find'... What exactly? It's like hunting HSEs... Fly til ya find one...

 

[Salonica]

True, although i'd modify that last statement to say "make it better for them".

Modders don't always change things for the better, depending on what you want from a game. Its just often that if there is a big modding community you can usually cherry pick the things you like.

I used to do a lot of modding for NWN2 (it was designed to be moddable though). Some people liked my stuff. Some people didn't.

Sometimes people on the forums used to tell me my ideas were rubbish.

You basically get treated the like a developer, except nobody is paying you to take the abuse.

Yeh, I did a lot with Flight Sim, no great thanks for a lot of work... so yeh I hear ya there..

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

So, if FD can fix the performance problems, which for me is the major issue, offline moddable doesn't help.

I don't have issues with performance issues... I mean, yes I had the issues but I do believe they will fix it.
The request for an offline version is to better expand the game and to eventually find walkaround to existing issues.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I don't have issues with performance issues... I mean, yes I had the issues but I do believe they will fix it.
The request for an offline version is to better expand the game and to eventually find walkaround to existing issues.

People have been asking for offline since before launch. FD haven't done it. I believe the current round is based on the Odyssey release based on the belief that if FD made it offline then they could focus on just the core tech and leave the content to the community, or something like that.

Its not going to happen of course. ED brings FD decent revenue as far as we can tell from their financial reports and it would mean current themselves off from income from cosmetics.

Plus, quite clearly, FD don't want to make ED a solo game. They want it to be online. Making it offline could kill the game, not just for those who play ED for the multiplayer, but for the offline players as well, as ED might simply stop supporting it altogether.

 

[SouthernGorilla]

And then what? You think there's nothing to do now, wait til you play with no economy or BGS at all. Or do you think they'll find a way to make those work autonomously?

"Space is cheap" only if you use HDD, not SSD. And even then "cheap" is a relative term. Plus it takes more than space. Something has to simulate the economy and BGS. All those NPCs have to be handled.

I'll guarantee a big part of the reason they nixed it in the first place was because they realized most people didn't have a system that could handle it. And I'd bet that's still true today.

 

[Vandeiken]

People are happy when they have a choice, either online or offline...

 

[Arindor]

I wholeheartedly support an offline mode. That is all.

 

[Xanix]

Hello to all. Here is an idea: what about exchanging the 'demo' option; for an 'offline' option, only the SOL's star system?
(What a commander do offline, stay offline; what a commander do online, stay online)

A mini offline «The Expanse», completely separated, from the online game option ... a great british game «connection» with a superb british tv series I would gladly buy this DLC!

Regards

 

[Old Duck]

Like i said, some clever people will create the appropriate injectors/loaders which will help, but people thinking they will just be able to download a Millenium Falcon model off the web and fly it in game will be sorely disappointed.

I've gone the other direction where I'm looking at ways to import a Cobra III into X4

Do you think modders will be about to fix the planetary generation? I'm not convinced.

Planet generation is WAY out of my league. That's serious coding right there. Then again, making beautiful babes in Skyrim is also out of my league, and yet people were able to perform miracles using a decade old graphics engine.. A single guy wrote Space Engine with decent planet generation, so just because you and I can't do it doesn't mean someone out there couldn't.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I've gone the other direction where I'm looking at ways to import a Cobra III into X4



Planet generation is WAY out of my league. That's serious coding right there. Then again, making beautiful babes in Skyrim is also out of my league, and yet people were able to perform miracles using a decade old graphics engine.. A single guy wrote Space Engine with decent planet generation, so just because you and I can't do it doesn't mean someone out there couldn't.

See, there is a bit of a difference there. What people are generally doing with Skyrim is using the engine's existing capabilities and simply using higher poly models/textures.

The usual reason Bethseda and other companies don't go crazy with models/textures even if the engine supports it is because it starts getting into crazy download sizes, and remember, someone has to pay for those downloads somehow. Take a look at the sizes of some of those mods. They are huuuge. Plus they also know the generation of those textures will only be of use to a tiny percentage of the audience.

However, a few years after a game's release, computers have gotten more powerful, download speeds faster/cheaper, disk sizes bigger, so people can load up on these massive textures.

Indeed, its probably time for me to revisit Skyrim and load it up with some mods. Been a good few years since i did that.

Now, if we are talking about the planetary generation in ED, that's a whole different ball of cheese. For example, you might be able to ramp up the textures (lol, and watch your computer catch fire) but the underlying issues are still going to be there. The repeating texture patterns and other issues. To "fix" that, you're basically going to have to hook into the planetary generation code and rewrite it, all without having access to the actual source code and documentation.

That isn't easy.

 

[Threeofseven]

Space Engine which is generated via a seed that is the same for all copies of the game, contains a full-scale 1:1 procedural generated replica of the entire Observable Universe with literal Trillions upon Trillions upon Trillions upon Trillions of star systems and it's only 53gb, with most of that being the 4k textures for the Sol system. And it has FAR more detail, variety, and depth to the generation tech than Elite does.

Elite's galaxy isn't big at all.

Good point. I vote yes.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Frontier's biggest issue as a dev studio is an utter lack of transparency. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Star Citizen's development where there's regular and consistent "behind the scenes" looks at what general employees are doing, showing off the development tools, and having programmers actually talk about the various challenges they face and how they approach them, as well as regularly interact with their community...but the sheer amount of radio silence that Frontier displays is just irritating.

Months and months and months go by without so much as a peep from Frontier about what they're working on or what issues they might be facing, no actual insight in to what the plan is for the game, just silence, curated Q&A's on the live streams that feel awkward as hell and don't actually reveal anything people don't already know. And then suddenly an update comes out, it's broken as hell, then they break radio silence only for as long as they feel the need to do damage control. This has been a consistent pattern since before Horizons launched, and Odyssey is just the most egregious example.

Braben saying that is insulting to be honest. If he actually gave a damn enough to genuinely feel that way, then Frontier would have been making us aware of issues and giving us insights in to what they're working on and what their plans are a long, long time ago.

Definitely spoilt, I'd say. How else would you describe by blinded by blingbling with nothing substantial delivered for almost 10 years.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Definitely spoilt, I'd say. How else would you describe by blinded by blingbling with nothing substantial delivered for almost 10 years.

Huh? Almost a decade ago the KS barely started. Since then they delivered ED all the way up to EDO, PC, PZ JWE and soon JWE2.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Huh? Almost a decade ago the KS barely started. Since then they delivered ED all the way up to EDO, PC, PZ JWE and soon JWE2.

I was talking about Star Citisnt

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Exactly, it's subjective.
That's why an offline version would satisfy people that are now very disappointed and the current online version would remain available for people like you that are fine already.

The issue with offline is that none of the systems would change unless you changed them.

Or you randomise every system you enter, which is also horrible as you would feel nothing matters.

If you did simulated NPC changes that would require serious CPU power and time. Look how long it takes for Civ to updates it's civilizations and that only has a few. In ED you would be looking at 50 odd thousand that need updating. I don't think that's properly achievable either.

It would get stale as nothing would change. I can't see that being subjective to be honest.