No Single Player offline Mode then?

[Yaffle]

All

It would seem emotions are getting out of hand, and positions becoming increasingly entrenched.

Shouting at one another, insulting each other and generally behaving badly isn't going to help.

Please all, have a break, walk the dog, make a cup of tea. Step away from the keyboard for a bit and think if what you are about to post is about the topic or the poster. If the latter then you've gone wrong somewhere.

Now, carry on.

 

[Half Giant]

EA and Blizzard have both said they had VERY GOOD technical reasons at the time why they could not deliver offline modes to Simcity and Diablo 3 respectively. They were adamant, it was technically not possible! Beyond the scope of their mighty abilities, that to do so would compromise the vision of their game and would wreck their careful designs!

... where have I heard this before...

Right. But consider the nature of the problems rather than the rhetoric. I believe FD, I don't believe Blizzard, in this issue. Again, based on the technical nature of the problem.

 

[RGS]

Michael,

I get having a vision is important and not compromise that vision is important but honouring your promises is equally important. Revealing massively impacting information a month from release is not the best way to go about breaking that promise. I don't use the word breaking in a way to paint you guys is a negative light because for the most part i've found you guys to be fairly up front about most things. The issue off offline play is not just about a missing feature it is actually something that will prevent a lot of people from being able to enjoy the game as you intended. Just this week a friend of mine bought ED. Cost around $100 after the conversion. He asked me if there's going to be an offline mode. I said yes. Clearly i'm a liar.

I could even have accepted the no offline thing and gotten over it if it was revealed in a manner that it honestly felt like it was as much a big deal to Frontier Development as it was to the backers. Just having a few lines in a weekly newsletter honestly felt like a massive cop out. Additionally revealing it only a month from release seems a bit cheeky and dishonest. I get that you guys were probably trying to figure you what the best way to reveal this information was but it should have been done the moment offline started to become an 'off the table' thing. I'm sure it was known about a long time ago. If not... ok fine. Just let us know.

This whole thing has left a rather sour taste in my mouth. I'm not wanting compensation or a refund. I actually really enjoy ED for the most part when i'm not having problems connecting to servers but what are FD going to do to at least make those who backed this game based on the promise of offline feel at least respected about this whole thing. I for one as a backer do not feel respected. Instead I feel like a number.... an insignificant number.

Cheers,

-Todd

Well said.

It's not just what's been done, but how it's been done that's the problem. I can understand the decision to remove Offline mode if they had to, but I can't understand how they possibly thought telling people about it in the way that they did was the right thing to do.

 

[jmga]

Hard to understand? Why would you say that. Nope it is very easy to understand, but is there any likelyhood of this happening? Doubt it.

That is why I want Frontier to tell us why they will not do this.

 

[enbeekay]

I'd just like to point out that comparing Frontier Devs to EA or Blizzard is a little unfair...
Blizzard earn millions a month milking the monstrosity that is World of Warcraft.
EA are a ridiculously large developer and publisher with far reaching tentacles who have the nerve to launch their own digital distribution system when it'd be nice if everybody just got on board with steam so that if anything ever happened to steam there'd be many many interested parties propping the servers up so that it should never die

Anyways...
My point is...
Blizzard and EA are huge with vast amounts of resources.
FD is tiny compared to them, like ridiculously tiny.

(all these next figures taken from wikipedia
EA: 9370 employees.
Blizzard: 4700
Activision Blizzard: 7061
Frontier Devs: 240

It's easy to see that EA with net income of $98m a year, activision blizzard with net income of $1 BILLION a year and all their staff have a ridiculous amount of resources available to make major changes should the need be as happened with sim city.

Frontier have done wonders with what they have available and credit should be given to them for actually achieving so much with so little.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

Right. But consider the nature of the problems rather than the rhetoric. I believe FD, I don't believe Blizzard, in this issue. Again, based on the technical nature of the problem.

The nature of the problem as described is one of proceedural generation, which as I have said is far from unsolvable. Is it work? yes, but this is work that could have been avoided by designing the game with offline only in mind at the beginning. This is a design decision dressed as a technical one, and it must have been taken early on for this to happen. That's why I'm now getting quite gratey about it.

 

[Seonid]

That is why I want Frontier to tell us why they will not do this.

They have done, repeatedly.

 

[Ydiss]

Sorry but i got the exactly same argument at Xrebirth release .. we all know what happened.
Its significant whoever posted more then normal, there are many people who posted only one time to say they dont agree.
They just need to be understood not banned like they have been by some there.
I am ok with online, but i also want this offline for the time i am out of my country. i will continue to ask and i think the game is not over about it.
Its just not the time now to have it
Btw cause of your Cmdr name i cant blame you .. i am a truly fan of Papy Boyington

It's clear this has upset quite a few people. It's also understandable why there is disappointment over this. But the first part of your post comes across as though you're proving an arbitrary number of people are definitely upset because you posted similarly in a forum for another game that failed at launch.

I might have missed your point there so forgive me if I did. The person you quoted is correct in that the size of this thread is not an accurate way to gauge the impact of this decision.

It doesn't mean it's a small impact. But all the same. We have no idea as to the volume of players who will get a refund and not buy the game.

But, and this is significant, how many players may have done the same had fd announced full support for offline with the reluctant admission that the online aspect would no longer follow their initial vision?

 

[jmga]

They have done, repeatedly.

Source please. I have not read anything about giving a DRM-Free server with the game from FD.

 

[Ydiss]

The nature of the problem as described is one of proceedural generation, which as I have said is far from unsolvable. Is it work? yes, but this is work that could have been avoided by designing the game with offline only in mind at the beginning. This is a design decision dressed as a technical one, and it must have been taken early on for this to happen. That's why I'm now getting quite gratey about it.

Add Mike has said more than a small number of times, the game was not designed with offline in mind, it was designed with online in mind.

 

[jamotide]

Frontier have done wonders with what they have available and credit should be given to them for actually achieving so much with so little.

That is why we gave them money in advance to make a cool game without publisher pressures for always online DRM and all that. That's why we mad now, bro.

 

[Schwarzwolf]

What i would personally prefer from Frontier. The answer is, what i pledged for and this is that, what is discriped in the faq on kickstarter. And solo offline is one of the points there. Without this feature it isn't the epic game with all the posibilities i was looking for.

Yes, to the people who are thinking its fine, that the feature is cut out and that the others should stop whining. Yea, i should aswell stop whining and start to make a own Kickstarter. Then offering the world out of it and invite you all to the project to pledge me millions. After this i cut busy features and leave only a RPG Maker game i cut together in 5 mins. So one island water around it, possible a forest and a mountain and the default character. Yes, all other features where to difficult to make and had to be cut out.

Reasons for me for the offline mode:
1. It was promised and is in the feature list from kickstarter. The game should have to be developed around the feature list. How already told, i prefer to pledge for that, what is mentioned. This alone should be reason enough.
2. I can play it, even when the server is offline or when i have a bad internet connection. That happens from time to time.
3. I could have my own gameworld and test things i couldn't test without an offline mode.
4. It could be more relaxing to play offline from time to time, as having only an online gamemode. Even when i could blend out all other players.

I doesn't even seems a problem with discovering special things. If they would seperate this stuff from their server and the player server or generate it differently (other seed), it would most likely work. And if they didn't designed it this way, they had the offline play in the feature list. So it would have been their job to do so.
I read the explanation of the devs about to difficult, could possible give away important information. In the feature list was mentioned offline mode aswell. So the game should have to be developed around this feature aswell.

I personally think, the decision to cut the feature was one of the largest mistakes FD made. There was a plan with some core features in the Kickstarter. One of them was already told to be canceled. How should we trust FD to not cancel more features in the future? Aswell Elite Dangerous was so epic because it was a Offline and an Online game both in one. Now its only an online game. And i doubt, that the number of peoples turn away from Elite now wouldn't be to small. Considered, that the original Elite was an offline game.

>For the Sim City thing
Yes, but only with the difference, that Sim City was never stated to be offline playable, after you weren't able to cancel your preorder anymore or be able to buy the game after all.

 

[enbeekay]

That is why we gave them money in advance to make a cool game without publisher pressures for always online DRM and all that. That's why we mad now, bro.

I wouldnt call the server communication DRM. That's just a generic assumption as to what it actually is. If I use a currency app on my phone that has to connect to the internet to get up to date exchange rate information, is that DRM? No, it's a fact of life for it to work properly it needs to be online.

 

[Seonid]

Source please. I have not read anything about giving a DRM-Free server with the game from FD.

Neither have I (which was my point), my apologies it appears I misunderstood your question.

 

[Sylv3r]

It's clear this has upset quite a few people. It's also unbeatable why there's disappointment over this. But the first part of your post comes across as though you're pricing an arbitrary number of people are definitely upset because you posted similarly in a forum for another game that failed at launch.

I might have missed your point there so forgive me if I did. The person you quoted is correct in that the size of this thread is not an accurate way to gauge the impact of this decision.

It doesn't mean it's a small impact. But all the same. We have no idea as to the volume of players who will get a refund and not buy the game.

But, and this is significant, how many players may have done the same had fd announced full support for offline with the reluctant a admission that the online aspect would no longer follow their initial vision?

Agree Ydiss, i was comparing this because it started the same way .. then the reviewer took it and it was a disaster.
I dont want this for ED. I want a full success for both reasons, one is because we will be able to play this game, second is that this success maybe can give extra founds to code this damned offline mode

 

[jmga]

Neither have I (which was my point), my apologies it appears I misunderstood your question.

Don't need to apologize, I know my english is not very good.

 

[Half Giant]

The nature of the problem as described is one of proceedural generation, which as I have said is far from unsolvable. Is it work? yes, but this is work that could have been avoided by designing the game with offline only in mind at the beginning. This is a design decision dressed as a technical one, and it must have been taken early on for this to happen. That's why I'm now getting quite gratey about it.

It may be solvable. But I don't think it is solvable in a practical way. Meaning the sheer dev time to do it is enormous. I completely agree with enbeekay. Blizzard have huge resources and it is a far smaller problem to make a local Diablo 3 compared to ED. The reason I used that comparison is because it is unfair. A fair question is why didn't they see this earlier but that is just poor project management in this one particular instance. Obviously it's a mistake and I'm sure they are gutted.

 

[jamotide]

I wouldnt call the server communication DRM. That's just a generic assumption as to what it actually is. If I use a currency app on my phone that has to connect to the internet to get up to date exchange rate information, is that DRM? No, it's a fact of life for it to work properly it needs to be online.

If only the rightsholder can have the necessary servers for it to work properly, then yes, that is DRM.

 

[Turjan]

It's not just what's been done, but how it's been done that's the problem. I can understand the decision to remove Offline mode if they had to, but I can't understand how they possibly thought telling people about it in the way that they did was the right thing to do.

Amen to this!

It's the ongoing lack of communication that's the killer in this matter.

It should not be down to an ambiguous comment buried in the middle of a newsletter to deliver a bombshell of this magnitude.

Nor should not be down to the devs and Producers and CEOs to jump onto these forums and spend their obviously increasingly limited time posting necessarily short (and therefore easily misinterpreted) comments in threads like this one. This is why game companies have Community Managers, is it not? So they can take information from the dev team, parse it into social-speak, and then pass it on to us, thereby sparing the devs the extra workload?

Why have a dog if you're going to bark yourself? :S

 

[KiRiASU]

My biggest concern with this development is, do they have the funds to run the server for more than a year, for example? I mean, there will be no retail version of the game you can buy. Only the digital one from the Frontier shop, right? That isn't very much for generating a steady income imho. I am very sceptical about the future of ED and FD at the moment. And, of course, very angry about the decision of cutting the promised offline mode from the final version, too. And I'm definitely thinking about making a refund request. To leave the sinking boat as long as I can. I pre-ordered the game for 100 €, incl. the addon pass. I don't even know if these addons will ever be released, tbh.

Again, one question that bothers me most, Mr. Brookes: what if you have to shut down the servers because of insufficient funds? Is a monthly subscription fee the next bad surprise?