No Single Player offline Mode then?

[sbdags]

Ok to add me 2 cents worth to the discussion... YES I am dissapointed about their being no offline mode now offered (having being stung by EA with sim city and sims 4 amongst others) but there is still a glimmer of hope for me. Didn't i read somewhere that even online mode contained (or was to contain) some sort of system so you could control who much PVE or PVP elements you had??? Or even just a button so you could be PVE only and not get jumped by other human players.

Are you talking about private groups? The Mobius one has an agreement that not PvP will take place unlawfully.

 

[light487]

Ok to add me 2 cents worth to the discussion... YES I am dissapointed about their being no offline mode now offered (having being stung by EA with sim city and sims 4 amongst others) but there is still a glimmer of hope for me. Didn't i read somewhere that even online mode contained (or was to contain) some sort of system so you could control who much PVE or PVP elements you had??? Or even just a button so you could be PVE only and not get jumped by other human players.

Correct, if you want to play online in a solo environment that is affected by the rest of the multiplayer community but simply not interact directly with them, you can.

 

[MajorEpeen]

Ok to add me 2 cents worth to the discussion... YES I am dissapointed about their being no offline mode now offered (having being stung by EA with sim city and sims 4 amongst others) but there is still a glimmer of hope for me. Didn't i read somewhere that even online mode contained (or was to contain) some sort of system so you could control who much PVE or PVP elements you had??? Or even just a button so you could be PVE only and not get jumped by other human players.

Online: Solo mode sounds perfect for you.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

Last time I worked with someone who had The Vision...

... In my case, that someone had The Vision on hallucinogens and suggested we re-organise all of the hubs on every single rack so they were colour coded, of course this would entirely wreck any semblance of organisation concerning where clients were as regards logical peering and topology but THE VISION!

 

[mbpoblet]

Ok to add me 2 cents worth to the discussion... YES I am dissapointed about their being no offline mode now offered (having being stung by EA with sim city and sims 4 amongst others) but there is still a glimmer of hope for me. Didn't i read somewhere that even online mode contained (or was to contain) some sort of system so you could control who much PVE or PVP elements you had??? Or even just a button so you could be PVE only and not get jumped by other human players.

Yes, we have solo online, but for most people it's not a question of single vs multiplayer, it's a question of not being able to play online only games, or of trust, or of not wanting to support DRM / online-only, or of fear for when the servers eventually go offline for good, or of the impossibility of modding without an offline mode, or of the way we were "informed", or of not being able to pause to take care of family... and I'm probably missing a lot of equally valid issues the dropping of offline mode brings up that have come up over the 474 pages of this monstrous thread.

 

[-o-]

Not really.

Regarding the change itself, if it's not intentional I don't understand how a company that can make games like Elite: Dangerous can make this kind of mistakes.

If it's intentional, I don't see it benefiting them; yes, they can keep the community closed and feed them advertisements and whatever, but it'll be a smaller and less dynamic community. Allow offline, and private servers, and modding, and whatnot, and you get an extremely long-lived game with a large and healthy community. And you still can feed them ads. (And regarding the increased risk of piracy... Braben himself has come out in the past calling piracy for what it is: free publicity; if the game is good enough, piracy becomes try-before-you-buy).

Regarding the way it's been revealed... it does far more damage than good to Frontier, so I can't understand this decision either. A dedicated mailing with an explanation and apology, probably with Braben in a video, and as soon as they realized or decided that offline was out for good would have angered a lot less people and caused much less damage to the future of the game.

So no, Frontier's reasoning escapes me. :S

I guess we also need to consider Mr Braben's position at this time.

Over the years, he has been under so much pressure to release E4, and in the week before the launch, this happens.

Even without this self-inflicted negative drama he would have been under immense pressure to deliver, but now this has happened, I am a little concerned about hows he's handling it all.

He appears to be completely unconcerned, but I have no idea how hes really feeling inside.

Perhaps this is the reason he has failed to respond directly, or perhaps he is really unconcerned. I guess we may never know.

 

[psyron]

Not really.

Regarding the change itself, if it's not intentional I don't understand how a company that can make games like Elite: Dangerous can make this kind of mistakes.

If it's intentional, I don't see it benefiting them; yes, they can keep the community closed and feed them advertisements and whatever, but it'll be a smaller and less dynamic community. Allow offline, and private servers, and modding, and whatnot, and you get an extremely long-lived game with a large and healthy community. And you still can feed them ads. (And regarding the increased risk of piracy... Braben himself has come out in the past calling piracy for what it is: free publicity; if the game is good enough, piracy becomes try-before-you-buy).

Regarding the way it's been revealed... it does far more damage than good to Frontier, so I can't understand this decision either. A dedicated mailing with an explanation and apology, probably with Braben in a video, and as soon as they realized or decided that offline was out for good would have angered a lot less people and caused much less damage to the future of the game.

So no, Frontier's reasoning escapes me. :S

RESOURCES, yes!
Many people don't believe it, fine. But that's what they say and i believe them. And it makes absolutely sense when you see the scale of the game they are targeting for. They can't afford to continue to develope 2 separate games. The only thing they might be able to do is to say "ok, fine, we will do a very limited offline-version, but it will not be supported in the future and all the extra expansions will not be available for it, since this would mean to continue to support TWO games till the end of all time!".
But i don't think people would be very happy with this alternative!
Once all the expansions like panetary landing will come out offline-players would cry and shout "we want those expansions too!!!".

Don't you guys see the dilemma FD is facing?

Though i agree that they should have communicated differentely. As you said, DB should have adressed this in a video separetely. But hey, he is a very good developer but not a very good PR guy. Chris Roberts would have sold this as an improvement and every SC fanboy would have bought into it (as they always do).

But i am quite sure we still will hear DB adressing this issue in the coming days ...

 

[noodle]

Please people, either ask for a refund or get over it.

While I agree that there's a lot of overreaction floating around, this really is an ignorant and unhelpful statement. A lot of people have fairly large chunks of money and the best part of a year of beta/alpha testing invested in this game. It's not like everyone just dropped a couple of notes on it last month. Expecting them to just "get over it" is a little unrealistic.

Personally, I'll be happy to play the game as it stands, but there's no way in hell I'd have backed it to the level I did if it hadn't been for the assurance that an off-line mode would be available.

 

[Biffa]

Has anyone considered that maybe if there was an offline version available then maybe later on down the line there may be a danger that players will opt to go offline instead because of 'issues' with the online version?

Issues being- Server problems/downtimes, Sales spam, information leaks, pay to win, bugged releases, imbalances, exploits etc.

There is a chance that if any of the above issues were to occur (which they will) then people who opt to go offline won't come back and their friends in third parties won't be happy (Amazon etc).

 

[mbpoblet]

Don't you guys see the dilemma FD is facing?

No, sorry, but I might very well be wrong.

 

[kenny_brocklestein]

But i am quite sure we still will hear DB adressing this issue in the coming days ...

They figured that about that Jesus bloke, right? Nah he's totally coming back, you wait and see! Any minute now...

 

[Zieman]

While I agree that there's a lot of overreaction floating around, this really is an ignorant and unhelpful statement. A lot of people have fairly large chunks of money and the best part of a year of beta/alpha testing invested in this game. It's not like everyone just dropped a couple of notes on it last month. Expecting them to just "get over it" is a little unrealistic.

Personally, I'll be happy to play the game as it stands, but there's no way in hell I'd have backed it to the level I did if it hadn't been for the assurance that an off-line mode would be available.

Ditto. .

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Has anyone considered that maybe if there was an offline version available then maybe later on down the line there may be a danger that players will opt to go offline instead because of 'issues' with the online version?

Issues being- Server problems/downtimes, Sales spam, information leaks, pay to win, bugged releases, imbalances, exploits etc.

There is a chance that if any of the above issues were to occur (which they will) then people who opt to go offline won't come back and their friends in third parties won't be happy (Amazon etc).

Good point.

 

[mbpoblet]

Has anyone considered that maybe if there was an offline version available then maybe later on down the line there may be a danger that players will opt to go offline instead because of 'issues' with the online version?

Issues being- Server problems/downtimes, Sales spam, information leaks, pay to win, bugged releases, imbalances, exploits etc.

There is a chance that if any of the above issues were to occur (which they will) then people who opt to go offline won't come back and their friends in third parties won't be happy (Amazon etc).

They'd still be buying the game, though, and telling friends how good it was, and convincing them to buy a copy.

And Frontier would have less server costs.

It'd be a win-win situation for everyone involved... except for Frontier's VISION™.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

Has anyone considered that maybe if there was an offline version available then maybe later on down the line there may be a danger that players will opt to go offline instead because of 'issues' with the online version?

Issues being- Server problems/downtimes, Sales spam, information leaks, pay to win, bugged releases, imbalances, exploits etc.

There is a chance that if any of the above issues were to occur (which they will) then people who opt to go offline won't come back and their friends in third parties won't be happy (Amazon etc).

I'm still cringing at the thought of AWS combined with P2P netcode. That's the multiplayer packet equivalent of five nights at freddies. Can YOU survive? #readyforfreddy

 

[noodle]

I guess we also need to consider Mr Braben's position at this time.

Over the years, he has been under so much pressure to release E4, and in the week before the launch, this happens.

It's interesting that other questions are taking a much lower profile in the fall-out from off-line-gate. I'm actually more concerned about the state of the product that's about to be launched. A lot of people are putting a positive spin on things, talking about on-going development etc. But if anyone had asked us nine months ago what we expected the game to look like at launch, I think we'd have anticipated a much more fully-featured, bug-free product than this. And this isn't negativity or whining. I still want the game to succeed, and despite my irritation with the way FD are (not) communicating, I still wish them every success.

 

[Biffa]

Ultimatley the foundations of this game revolved around players who years ago were quite happy to play for years on their own offline, naturally in todays huge corporate gaming world that would be a business disaster.

 

[rebelredneck]

Has anyone considered that maybe if there was an offline version available then maybe later on down the line there may be a danger that players will opt to go offline instead because of 'issues' with the online version?

Issues being- Server problems/downtimes, Sales spam, information leaks, pay to win, bugged releases, imbalances, exploits etc.

There is a chance that if any of the above issues were to occur (which they will) then people who opt to go offline won't come back and their friends in third parties won't be happy (Amazon etc).

Server issues are what worry me as well after EA shocking handling of SWTOR. Nice stable half full servers, then EA cut the number of servers and ruined the game, waiting 20 - 30 mins to do a quest was not fun and hence I abandoned the game. In ED the universe is different and I do still want to be able to log on when I want and not get booted off mid hyperspace as currently happens after a new update. again another reason why i do prefer offline play

 

[mbpoblet]

But if anyone had asked us nine months ago what we expected the game to look like at launch, I think we'd have anticipated a much more fully-featured, bug-free product than this.

Frontier don't agree, apparently:

If you were able to offer me on the 3rd January 2013 what we will deliver on the 16th December 2014, I would have grabbed it with both hands. It is fantastic what the team have done, and are still doing – a phenomenal job.

(From the newsletter.)

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

[WeirdWizard]

Correct, if you want to play online in a solo environment that is affected by the rest of the multiplayer community but simply not interact directly with them, you can.

But you still have to put up with their grubby fingers all over your galaxy... Sorry Frontier Developments rich deep and engaging galaxy. grumble, grumble.

 

[sbdags]

It's interesting that other questions are taking a much lower profile in the fall-out from off-line-gate. I'm actually more concerned about the state of the product that's about to be launched. A lot of people are putting a positive spin on things, talking about on-going development etc. But if anyone had asked us nine months ago what we expected the game to look like at launch, I think we'd have anticipated a much more fully-featured, bug-free product than this. And this isn't negativity or whining. I still want the game to succeed, and despite my irritation with the way FD are (not) communicating, I still wish them every success.

I'm not so worried about the features but yes I am concerned that the release is being rushed and we still have a very buggy product. It's not unplayable but it has some serious defects. (CTD in 2014? Really...?) I'm holding out to see what Thursday brings but I suspect offline-gate will turn into ready-for-release-gate quite soon if they don't sort it out.

I expect some bugs but once you go online it had better be working....