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.
Wrong analogy IMHO (yes i realise yours was a real story).
You go into a restaurant because they had Bean Burger on the menu, sit down and order nibbles and drinks. The chef takes your order of one Bean Burger and one Beef Burger.
You are told after a wait that actually they had sold out of Bean Burger earlier in the day and whilst they had hoped to get more in in the mean time it was just too late really.
Angry you ask for a refund on what you have had already, the nibbles and drinks. You could STILL have something else, but you CHOOSE not too. Your choices are yours and I for one will not try to undermine them, but I am afraid the only error here was in poor communication.
Frontier have admitted that very mistake and have offered refunds to the unfortunate few who will not be able to play at all. For the rest who CHOOSE not to have the Online game, then that's a shame, would like you to hang around, but standing outside and waving placards around is really churlish.
Yeah easy for me right, I had little interest in the Offline mode at all anyway and that's despite travelling a LOT. ut that's just me... and yes I am hoping the same does not happen to the planned expansions, but then i would likely ask for a refund on the Expansion Pass piece
IF that ever transpired.
But I bought into the vision of David Braben's ONLINE Elite and all the dynamic changing stuff with inserted events and that as far as I understood it was THe Product, the Offline was an add-on.
Its disappointing for those affected by this decision, but I am a little perplexed at some of the Internet-warrior going s on here sometimes over it, when said people are perfectly capable of playing the online version and are ultimately getting the Product they agreed to BACK, just with a mode less but other items added, lest we forget the items that weren't originally in the KS but have since been added.
Personally I feel its a shame that FD have failed to communicate this to the DDF (though i assume that was to avoid a leak before any official statement and no, I am not in the DDF) or that FD have learned from previous poorly communicational issues.
